RBI ex-deputy guv says banks need to go digital

DESPITE MANY constraints, banks were ensuring business continuity and uninterrupted customer service leveraging of technology and digitisation of operations are critical factors that are enabling banks to offer services without disruption, Mr Khan said.

The Covid-19 crisis provides an opportunity to revive, reinvent and move more banking products and services to digital platforms, said H.R. Khan, former deputy governor, Reserve Bank of India.

He was speaking at the inauguration of an initiative titled “Covid19 Pandemic and Business Continuity and Change Planning (BCCP) in Banks: People Perspectives” organised by the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT), Hyderabad.

He said that despite many constraints, banks were ensuring business continuity and uninterrupted customer service. Leveraging of technology and digitisation of operations are critical factors that are enabling banks to offer services without disruption, Mr Khan said. Pointing out that due to Covid-19 people are hesitant to deal with paper currency of visit bank branches, he said every bank needs to have a digital plan. “Digital payments, more particularly Unified Payments Interface (UPI), have been quite successful,” he noted.

He said there was a need to similarly expand products for customers. He cited the example of how WhatsApp was being used in a big away, even by the elderly though they were not digitallysavvy. “We need to learn the right lessons from such tools and plan our strategies like doing banking from home to reach out to customers across segments,” Mr Khan sid. He also called for increased security features.

Dr A.S. Ramasastri, director, IDRBT, “If this pandemic had struck us about three decades ago, when we had no core banking solution, no centralised database, no mobiles, and other technologies for taking banking to the customer; our BCP (business continuity planning) would have been much more difficult. Technological advancements in banking have come in handy.”

He said that “since Covid-19 is an opportunity to digitise, bank managements should leverage new age technologies like Internet of Things, 5G, blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and others.” E-programmes would help bridge the gap between customer and banker as they cover areas like doorstep banking, mobile payments, social media banking, cyber crimes and defences, fraud analytics and customer lifecycle management among others. The response to the e-programmes initiative is said to be good, with the number of registrations being almost three times of the programmes offered in the classroom mode.