Strategy OPEN’ Is Playing Out

Axis Bank is betting big on its digital lending platform — a complete automated credit assessment process, which provides an instant underwriting decision. The initiative originally started by using customers' transaction histories and credit bureau scores as primary data sources for other data points. The lending process, which earlier used to take a week's time, now takes seven minutes and four clicks. "We are ready with account aggregators-based lending," says Sameer Shetty, Head, Digital Business & Transformation. The account aggregator is a new RBI initiative which allows easy sharing of customer data among banks and financial institutions. More than 60 per cent of the bank’s new business loans up to ` 10 lakh come from the digital lending platform.

An important part of the platform, according to the bank, is the ‘OPEN’ strategy. ‘ OPEN’ stands for rebuilding the entire journey through operations (O), proprietary in-house capabilities (P), ecosystem of partners (E), and results, financial impact and numbers (N). "We have built full- stack digital teams. There are 800 people focusing on the bank’s digital agenda. In addition, we have 110 in-house engineering teams,” adds Shetty.