Branch - An Empowered Super Channel

61% of India's population living in the villages and with only 44% of the population uses smart phones, constituting a big challenge for expanding banking services to all. Two bankers and one tech CEO delve into the challenges and share the various ways to achieve the goal

Government-owned public sector banks remain the backbone of banking spread across India, a large geography. The type of customer base is also distributed across a wide spectrum of technology awareness.

As per data from UN, 62% of the total population of India, viz 0.85 billion people, are from rural background. This population still prefers physical banking services, while people in urban areas prefer the digital mode.

Deepak Sarda, GM – IT at Indian Bank, explains this nicely: “It’s obvious that digital technology can do several chores quicker and better than humans, but it can never replace humans since it lacks emotional intellect, empathy, can’t work outside the box or something creative. This technology will simply assist humans (both service provider and consumer) and this physical-digital blend will always exist irrespective of the type of industry.”

Demonetization and the pandemic enabled large scale technology adoption even in rural areas. Empowered with high internet penetration, the rural masses have access to similar digital banking infrastructure as their urban peers. Although they are familiar with technology, they are cautious, and therefore, reluctant to transact on digital banking platforms, observes Rajesh Ram, GM & CIO at Bank of India.

Harshal Dunakhe, CEO, Business Automat at Kores India, observes that most banks have taken strong steps towards servicing the relatively tech savvy customer base by investing in kiosks, ATMs, UPI, and mobile based banking channels. The experience that a customer who prefers going to the counter gets at the branch needs to be upgraded. Kores a technology solutions provider that helps banks adopt relevant technologies that improve customer experience.

DE-CROWING THE BRANCHES