‘Atmanirbhar’ Banking through Digital SBI

State Bank of India has been powering a paradigm shift in customer convenience online by providing safe, intuitive and nimble solutions to elevate the user experience during digital transactions, says RAJNISH KUMAR, CHAIRMAN, SBI

SBI has been enabling Indians to be truly ‘Aatmanirbhar’ even during the COVID-19 situation with ‘Ghar Se Banking’; how would you describe the bank’s pioneering role in this regard? State Bank of India being the largest bank of the country with more than 20% market share, has always been playing a pivotal role in the Indian economy and more specifically during all the critical times in the past. The significant role of SBI during the period of demonetisation and now during the ongoing Covid-19 crisis is central to the country’s ecosystem. During the ongoing crisis, all our 22500+ branches, 58000+ ATMS, 60000+ CSP points are working relentlessly every day to serve the customers. All of our digital channels like Net Banking, Mobile Banking, YONO, UPI, IMPS, etc. are working seamlessly, enabling the customers to do transactions from the ease of their home. The branches have been functioning with required staff to meet the customer demands ensuring no disruptions.

In these trying times we are also highly thankful to our service providers for ATMS / Recyclers and Business Correspondents who have also been working to keep the ATMS / Recyclers and CSP network up and running, providing a great degree of comfort to our customers including small ticket customers at rural and semi urban areas. What are the differentiators that set SBI apart from other banks when it comes to embracing advances in technology and implementing them across the board? SBI is positioned itself strongly amongst its peers by having one of the most powerful IT suites. This has been possible as the Bank has been consistently investing in IT over the past decade. Today around 90% of the total transactions are going through alternate channels with 57% of the transactions through digital channels. With our frontline staff working tirelessly, it was a task for our Global IT Centre to ensure that there are no system disruptions and the normal functioning of the branches is assured.

We have been providing safe, intuitive and nimble solutions as well as world class experience to the customers, government and ecosystem partners. The guiding principles of our Bank’s digital transformation strategy are:

• Omni-channel Customer Experience

• Simplified business processes

• Data and Analytics driven individualised

During the ongoing crisis, all our 22500+ branches, 58000+ ATMS, 60000+ CSP points are working relentlessly every day to serve the customers.

products and services

• Adoption of new technologies

• Securing IT assets and customer information

We have also adapted an agile method of project delivery, where the IT team and the business unit of the organisation comes together to solve a problem. This allows a wider acceptance of the solution across the organisation. The pace at which technologies are evolving, there cannot be a sure shot strategy or mantra for developing revenue streams and promoting innovation.

In order to leverage the rapidly changing technology and the evolving start-up culture, we have adopted the two pronged strategy of partnering and co-creating with Fintechs and promoting internal innovation by our employees. We have a dedicated department which focusses solely on the application of emerging technologies as well as fostering partnerships with startups and fintechs for partnership and co-creation. We also adopt the practice of first going through some use-cases to figure out the best fit for the technology within the organisation or rather deciding whether adopting of the technology adds something of value to the customer or not. The only success mantra in today’s dynamically changing world is to be open to changes and keep on experimenting even at the cost of failures. In what way does the YONO app facilitate the requirements of SBI customers over and beyond just banking services? What is the scope for extending this concept still further? The uniqueness of YONO lies in the name itself, YOU ONLY NEED ONE. From the design phase itself, we were very clear that we are not aiming to launch just another banking or financial app. It is a one stop solution to fulfil the customers banking, financial as well as lifestyle needs. Today, the customer has a choice of several banks and all the banks have Core Banking, Internet Banking, Mobile Banking, etc. With digital products of all banks have more or less the same features and at par interest rates and charges, it is the digital experience of the customer which has ultimately become the major differentiator.

The launch of YONO defines

the paradigm shift in terms of customer convenience through efficient deliveries at lower costs and greater reach for the Bank. YONO is steadily strengthening in terms of reach as well as value. YONO has achieved 45.8 million downloads with daily logins of around 5.5 million. And, with 24 million accounts, it’s also the world’s largest digital bank. We envisage to gradually move most of our banking processes/ offerings to YONO, bringing a “Brick to Click” paradigm shift ushering a complete transformation from “Traditional Branch Banking” to a “Digital Bank Experience”. YONO caters to various Banking and Financial services as well as lifestyle requirements and delivers world class enhanced customer experience through distinctive, omnichannel and seamless customer journeys. It is envisaged on the founding pillars of customer centricity, superior user experience and analytics.

SBI has always been committed to provide an enhanced customer experience and we continuously strive to offer new, secure, convenient, responsive and innovative financial solutions to our customers. With the same spirit we have introduced different variants of YONO viz. Global, Business, Krishi, etc. with tailor-made solutions and offerings to cater to the customers of these segments.

Going forward, what would be the key challenges and opportunities for the banking sector in India in light of the COVID19 pandemic and resultant restrictions/ advisories? How does SBI plan to leverage technology for managing the banking needs of Indians during this crucial phase?

If we think of demonetisation as the step that truly kicked off the era of a cashless society, the current COVID-19 pandemic can be considered as the start of the digital economy. Most of the banks already had a lot of digital solutions available for small ticket payments and transfers, but as an Industry we had not emphasised much on banking with zero physical interaction. In view of the need to maintain social distancing and decongestion in the brick and mortar branches, the journey of process digitisation is gathering rapid pace. All the reasons for which a customer needed to visit physically are being addressed through technology like online upload of document, facial recognition, online authentication etc. Our solutions for different segments under the YONO umbrella is a prime example of this. Going forward, Remoteadvisory and Robo-advisory services may also gather pace and the entire delivery journey will be digitised.

Due to the restrictions and advisories, working from home has become the new normal. With banking categorised as an essential service and although our branch-employees are present on the counters, most of the customers are utilising digital channels. Banking industry may also explore this and work out the ways to migrate all low value transactions to digital channels while retaining high value transactions requiring human intervention, at the branches.

We at SBI are already leveraging Artificial Intelligence and RPA technologies to minimise human intervention and contact in our processes as well as providing self-service avenues to the customers. We already have a chatbot available whose capabilities we are going to revamp and expand. Our pre-approved digital loans for the personal segments and SME segments are already very popular. Adding the insights from data analytics has also brought improved efficiencies to our systems and procedures. Video KYC facility will provide a digital touchpoint to the customers, for submission and updating of their KYC documents. Our RMS (Registered Mobile No. based) service is another step in the direction of fulfilling the nonfinancial services related needs of our customers without physical branch visit.

Do you see more SBI customers opting for nonbranch banking in future? How is SBI gearing up to handle the evolving ‘new normal’ in banking?

SBI has been consistently investing in IT over the past decade. Today, around 90% of the total transactions are going through Alternate Channels with 60% of the transactions through digital channels. With increased penetration of digital technologies and mobile internet in the India hinterland, we shall soon see the time where the entire value chain has been digitised.

With more and more dependency on digital and technology for providing seamless services to our customers, we are focussing on making our IT more resilient. When the pandemic crisis had struck all of a sudden, and the attendance in office had thinned out, providing the necessary IT support to our front line staff became a challenge. However, prompt measures and change-planning implemented by our Global IT Centre enabled the Bank to handle the situation swiftly without causing any disruptions in our business. Immediate strategies along with infra for work-from-home was put in place, which helped us to achieve ‘business as usual’ in a relatively short time. As a risk mitigating measure GITC’S operational staff had been segregated to different locations to ensure Human BCP for seamless operations. We have 2-3 standby sites in addition to the primary site.

Cyber criminals and hackers are trying to take advantage of the present situation and in fact have become hyper active. Our Cyber security system team has been ramped up to ensure resilience to all the COVID-19 themed attacks. We have adapted a WAR room level preparedness where our Security Operations Centre, Command Centre and next level security technologies viz. WAF, RASP are always on alert.

Our digital offerings for customers viz. Yono, Net Banking, Swayam kiosks, e2e digitisation of loan products, Pre-approved loans etc. and the digital enablers for branches viz. CRM solution, analytics based leads, YONO branch interface etc. are helping our branches to serve the customers in these unprecedented times.