 Thank you so much, E4M, for Anand and for my own brand for giving me this opportunity. First of all, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We all know, Panamik has shown us the new way of working. Also, it has transformed and carved the new age thinking for small, medium, large enterprises in the space of customer communication and the new way we do the business. It has changed the definition for an ideal customer approach and customer centricity. This isn't about understanding the customer behavior, but actually venturing into new possibilities of reaching out end users and mobilizing the enterprise workforces with trust and technology. Based on this thought process, we would be discussing today about harnessing the power of digitalization in the financial sector. To double-click this burning topic, how digitalization and the customer communication has given wings to the FSI sector in the country, we have Mr. Ashish Gupta, who is the CTO of Max Popa Health Insurance with us. Welcome, Ashish, and it's a pleasure to have you with us today. Ashish. Hi, everyone. Hey, Milan. Thank you so much for having me. Indeed a pleasure. Ashish, most of the financial institutions have been on various stages of their digital transformation journey, which in most cases was limited to customer-facing digital layer. It was actually limited. The new challenges upon financial institutions has accentuated the need for more and a holistic approach. Moving beyond the customer interface and digitization includes the middle and the back office operations and support functions where processes are transformed and automated into an intelligent workflow. Well, in and around, we have a few questions for you, Ashish, and I would like you to throw some light and help us understand the scenario better from your industry point of view. So, Ashish, are you ready to take those questions? All set, please. All set. So, Ashish, the pandemic has disrupted people's lives, business, economies, financial institutions are no different than that, right? How do you observe the financial sector reeling under this COVID-19 crisis? So, look, COVID has had multiple impact across different industries and it's obviously touched different industries differently. I represent insurance, that is the part of the financial sector that's actually gained traction during this COVID times, both from top of the mind recall in terms of customers making them realize how fragile the world today is and how much they need to protect themselves. So, that mindset's come in, but actually in very tangible numbers. I think all of us have seen triple digit growth rates for most of this year on at least new business. So, in that sense, I think I represent an industry that is fortunate in these unfortunate times. But yeah, it's not been too bad for us. I think more of it has been on the side of ensuring that that growth is sustainable, ensuring that the back offices, as you mentioned, perform to task. But for us, it's not really been a crisis. In fact, in many sense, we hope it's going to be a tipping point for insurance penetration in this country. Right. In fact, certain policies by government are also encouraging a lot of people to bend towards picking up the life insurance policies. And if you see Ashish, I mean, it's very good for the business that is booming the current era. Then we come to the second question, Ashish, when it comes to insurance buying behavior, like we were just talking about, the consumer behavior, the challenges in the pre-COVID era were more towards insufficient penetration, deficient, rural consumer base, etc. I mean, there were a lot of them. But key reasons could be lack of awareness or intention to buy. And intention to buy was one of the biggest concerns, right? How this has changed and how did the insurance sector deal with such firefighting scenarios during this COVID period? Now, this is during the COVID period where awareness drive to be accelerated, to reach the maximum and go about the limitations, increase the accessibility as well as manage with your resources. What do you think, Ashish? So, yeah, that's true. Insurance is a push product at the end of the day. It is pulled in a certain number of cases where suddenly you go to a hospital or some relative of yours has fallen ill and there's been a massive need for cash. And then you suddenly realize that, hey, I should protect myself from that. In fact, I think statistically medical loans is the third largest loan category in this country, which is quite a sad state of affairs. So it has been that. Now, specifically talking about COVID, I think COVID just raised awareness, whether it was government initiatives like Corona coverage and other COVID programs that they pushed insurance to run or whether it was a general understanding that look a simple thing like a flu, which was always believed to be a flu until it became COVID. It was just a flu can actually have a bill upwards of five to 15 lakhs, right? So I think that awareness came naturally. The challenge for us was that this has always been a half-digital what is uglyly known as physical half-digital industry for that to adopt complete digital mechanisms where the entire payment is digital, the entire form filling is digital, the entire interaction with the customers in terms of their medical declarations is digital, the entire issuance is digital. So to enable that has been a significant exciting journey for us. It's not that all of this did not exist, but it was just on steroids for the last six months. And if you look at some of the initiatives beyond the basics of issuance and form filling that we've done, we've launched stuff like EMIs exactly to your point to make our rural audience that much, that product that much more tangible to them to the tier two cities, to the tier three cities. And we've seen fantastic adoption. I mean, historically, I've launched EMIs multiple times in my career. And typically the trajectory we've had in two months is something that we typically see in maybe two years. It's already had a massive adoption rate. And similarly, if you look at what we've been able to launch and get adopted has been phenomenal. So our entire claims process used to be a physical process. You always had to courier slash drop your claim documents to a nearest center to get a reimbursement claim. All of that was made digital. And today in less than about 45 days of launch, it has more than 90% adoption. So from zero to 90 in 45 days is something that obviously I've never seen throughout my career. So I think very, very exciting times from that perspective, lots of initiatives keeps us all of us on our toes because it's all new world to us. It's a lot of new exciting initiatives. But the good part is most of these initiatives are initiatives not push initiatives. So the EMI is a pull initiative. The whole claims piece is a pull initiative making all our employees work from home in a manner that does not compromise security. Again, a massive pull initiative because tomorrow it opens up the doors for us to open up virtually anybody to come in as a part time resource as a full time resource, work from their house, work from their hometowns. So I think it's a wonderful opportunity. I think all of us have been in a mad rush both from a land grabbing business perspective as well as business enabling perspective. So yeah, lots of exciting things happening and lots of exciting things to look forward to. Absolutely. And one of the enabler is the self digitization and the interest of people buy new handsets devices. That's also refuelling the growth for all the sectors because people are now more hooked up and they try and understand and the kind of information they want. They actually get it. I'm in the phone with the one click so that becomes easy for people to even sell through these policies and approach. I have actually made the point honestly because I mean for all the flat that these guys receive our colleagues in the telecom world have done a magnificent job during the COVID period. I mean I have not seen anybody complain that hey, my internet is not working so I can't work. They've been able to sustain a dramatic increase in the manifold increase in their demand without much downtime at all. So I think hats off to them and a big thanks to that industry for helping us power through this time. Yeah, actually. They are the catalysts. They are the source for taking that information from point A to point B for us to be able to act upon and fueling both our businesses on the digital side and I belong to that so I totally understand that. Well, that takes us to the next question actually. The digital revolution that has transformed the way consumer buy music. I mean we just spoke about it. Taxis and communicate with each other is a phenomenon. And now the trend is equally catching up to the insurance industry. What scope has insurance industry scored for itself during this phase and what opportunities do you foresee for the segment going forward? So I think insurance is a far more complicated product. It's both complicated on two fronts. One, it's a high ticket size item. B, it has a lot of sections, subsections and clauses in terms and conditions. So what happens is insurance by default is a more complex project so I must be honest, I mean the dramatic self-serve by that, let's say a music industry has so far. But what's happened is that at least the first steps are taken. Now people are comfortable talking to people digitally. You don't necessarily have a person saying that, hey, come visit my home and when you visit my home at that time, I will think about what you're saying. So now people are comfortable conversing with experts, whether agents, advisors or their friends and fraternity discuss digitally and then buy digitally, at least that's happened. Which was for a long time not happening. It was all physical, face-to-face contacts. Only a few players in this entire industry had been able to do a significant job at digital. But that's happened. So that's good. So that's step one. Now as insurers make their products easier to understand, more transparent, I think the next stage hopefully will come in a year or two. But the good part is everybody's buying digitally so the next steps can be taken. Otherwise it was a non-starter. How many of us have bought insurance policies? How many of us have actually read the terms and conditions? Most of us go by what the person told us. So that's where I think insurance companies will also take a, they've already done a lot of good work here. But I think they'll continue to strive to bring in more and more transparency such that a consumer can understand a policy in maybe 30 seconds to two minutes. And when that happens, I think you'll see more and more adoption of self-buy, self-serve and all of that. Absolutely. And I mean, I myself know where different. During pandemic I bought my first policy. I mean the life, not first, but obviously one of the life insurance policies. And I understand how the entire effect of pandemic has given one to think differently when it comes to insurance segment. Well, in year 2020, Ashish, that has been a defining movement for the digital transformation for us because it took us to the need of digital transformation. As a financial institution that invested strategically, financially and culturally in digital, we would like to share, would you like to share the Max Bupa, how they have shifted the gear and built true only channel capability with seamless connectivity across channels. So I must say one thing by the way, I think financial industry had taken great leaps in digitization even before the pandemic. So I don't think the pandemic has dramatically altered the way we were building stuff or the way we were thinking. And I mean, I've talked about insurance. Let me even talk about banks. Last time, you visited a bank, right? At least I haven't visited a bank in over two to three years. Yeah. So I think a lot of, and if you look at loans, for example, as another financial industry, today you get loans within minutes sitting from the comfort of your home. And the same was true for insurance. You would always buy insurance digitally. So I don't think the pandemic has dramatically altered the strategic direction we had. It's just made it that much more easy to get adoption. And hence, we are even more excited in bringing up the pace at which we were trying to drive this. So if earlier digitization and digitization was one of the strategic objectives, I think now there is no other objective but digitization and digitization, right? So new channels for sales, better customer service and digitize everything. And then of course, within digitization, now what's happening is since you have everything digitized, you cannot just go ahead and automate everything. So I'll give you another example. We used to run these manual cues for issuance as a check, double check, whatever the thought process was. This year we've gotten rid of all of them. So if you have, if you buy a policy and a medical is not required, the policy goes end to end without any human being ever touching it. And the tax have reduced by a ratio of, let me put this, by a ratio of 150s to one. So if it used to take 150 units of time for a straight through issuance, it probably takes one unit of time now. So I think what's happened is I don't think it's a strategic change. We would have crumbled had we not taken the strategic bet on digitization or digitization last year, last year, over the last five years. That's what's made us survive and in fact thrive in this environment. But this whole pandemic has just expedited and catalyzed the way we look at these initiatives. We're trying to do everything faster now because we know the moment we take it live that option will happen. We are seeing impact of releases right away, like I talked about the EMITs, and there are many such initiatives, right? So it's made us more and more excited, more and more eager, and I think more and more resources are being put in right away. Right, I guess then I can please go on, yes. Yeah. So what is the roadmap when you look at it? I mean, currently you've been using the info with chatbot, okay, which is backing up your one of the additional channels that you've added for customer communication, which is whatsapp. I mean, what is your view about this? So look what's happened is that the way people work has started to become very, very different, right? People aren't sitting in their branches or in head office always having access to laptop, right? So now you need to make information not only available, you need to make it available in a friendly manner, real-time manner, and that's where the whole info-bip relationship is coming in. Earlier most of us would be sitting in head offices right now when we are either on the move or in middle school of call, if I need to quickly check something, I don't really log into a complex system and go through three layers of security. I just want something right there on my fingertips, and since it's coming from my mobile, it is pre secure, you don't need to do an OTP. So that's where it helps, what are my latest sales? A particular customer called me what is the status of his policy? Let's say the policy has not been issued yet what is the status of the claims? The customer is missing some document can I send that document and get that document right away? So I think that's whats happening the whole point of the whole info-bip whatsapp initiative for us is how do we enable people to get exactly the information they want with one message, right? So I want the policy, policy number soft copy in your whatsapp right away, right? So that's the whole thing that we are trying to drive and I think that's going to be a big, big foray going forward because now people more and more are going to be on the move that whole area of investing into laptops, trying to work with laptops and all is just going to go away. Sorry gentlemen, I have to intervene here I'm so sorry we're just out of time I really want to thank both of you for this wonderful session it's been great listening to you and thank you for joining us it was a great, the first five-side chat of the Thursdays with info-bip, a special series brought to you by exchange for media in association with info-bip and we had Mr. Ashish Gupta who is the CEO of Max Boopa Health Insurance and Mr. Millian Kadam, business head west info-bip in India, private limited thank you so much for joining us gentlemen thanks for having us, thank you so much with this thank you so much we move on to the next session which is a panel discussion I just want to mention that Thursdays with info-bip is a special series where the focus is on the digital and its facets of digital especially technology and marketing so the next panel discussion is about the future of the Indian financial sector in a hyper-connected era and I want to introduce the esteemed panelists we have Mr. Alok Ban director and CMO Max Life Insurance we have Mr. Lakshman Vela Yutham CMO Ujwun Small finance bank we have Mr. Ravi Santanam CMO HDFC bank we have Mr. Sachin Vashishta AD and head digital and marketing and taking this discussion forward our session chair Ms. Harsha Solanki MD India Bangladesh Sri Lanka and Nepal info-bip before I hand it over I want to also announce that we'll be taking questions from all the viewers you can post your questions and we'll make sure it gets answered thank you so much for joining us and over to you Ms. Solanki Thank you Rohel for the lovely introduction and honestly I'm personally looking forward to hearing some great insight from the esteemed panelists that we have today on the most researched and talked about topic future of Indian financial sector in a hyper-connected era in the last few years there have been innumerable innovative technological innovations that are used by the industries to offer increasingly more world-class products and services this is something worth pondering over so how much time do you think the telephone launched in 1878 took to reach 100 million users well it took them about 75 years mobile phones 16 years Facebook for 1.5 years 2 years Reliance Geo took 170 days to reach 100 million users so in this hyper-connected world where disruption is the norm the faster one can connect to more people the better are the chances of winning the customers of tomorrow building a robust fintech ecosystem where start-up firms engage in partnerships with financial institutions research institutions technology experts and government agencies have expected to be key enabler for growth and innovation in the financial services sector the financial services has embarked upon its digital journey and is catching up fast with its global peers in terms of adoption and implementation India has leapfrogged into the era of innovation and financial services by adopting the latest in technology today's digital age and hyper-connected environment requires financial institutions to reimagine their business functions continuously and indian BFSI sector is making great strides when it comes to true digital transformation today's discussion will focus on the exponential technologies disrupting the sector so let's kick-start this discussion with our esteemed panelist and my first question would be to you Alok we all know that in today's hyper-connected world financial institutions must learn the lessons on how to stay in the market that is facing one of the significant disruptions so far but when it comes to customer expectations how has hyper-connectivity changed customer expectations in your view thank you very much for having me here Harsha and hi to all my co-panelists I hope you can ask and hear me well yes very well good so you know this is a very short question that has basically expanded at least in the last one year and this pandemic year when you look at it from the customer's lens anything and everything that you could have imagined has changed and for me to be able to give a suitable response I guess I may take an R so I will try and break into smaller and I will really start from the basics as to why has why have we changed and we also customers right so why have we changed I think it's important to understand that what we call what we faced as the global pandemic actually began from a global pandemic moved more closer to us in the local pandemic and then became a personal pandemic because this thing started to appear outside our houses our neighbors were facing it and therefore customers and consumers at large and human beings at large had no other option but to start acting and not wait but to act on their own whatever they could understand and hear from all the communication that they were receiving they took some actions and frankly we are all human beings is that species that has is the strongest species back to Darwinian theories back to our school days survival of the fittest so we had to change because we had to survive our existence was questioned human beings are social animals and being social became the biggest weapon touch was a weapon again was a weapon we had to change ourselves so consumers changed overnight and are continuously changing as we speak so is the pandemic over hopefully we are seeing it it all its way out but had the consumers started to change they continue to change and I'm hoping that in some time we all as consumers will also come back to some of our known practices because everything changed the biggest thing is touch became a problem so touch free was I would say the biggest need to manage the pandemic and each other and hence the moment you say touch free comes in the word digital so digital and you heard the previous panelists also talk about it digital is not only now a boardroom conversation I think it's a bedroom conversation from the boardroom to the bedroom it's a personal conversation then just a very nice CEO talk I mean I can tell you I think totally my father a lot touch board who's 87 enjoys paytm the most because he thinks he's fully empowered to pay all his bills and he is enjoying the OTT platforms through the day on Netflix so everybody's quotient the digital quotient of everybody has taken kind of I guess I would imagine 400 X times of development and adoption so that became a starting challenge for any of our organizations I believe that the real heroes for from a corporate perspective other than obviously a frontline people all the guys were meeting customers the real heroes heroes have been the digital folks who've enabled all of us including organizations and our consumers to be able to converse well one thing that did not change for humans is connections you may become socially distant you may become no touch and feel but connections have not disappeared we can't survive without connections so digital took over the platform of connections now that's really why the consumer changed and the consumer continues to change the second step I'd like to really address over here is that how did organizations progressive organizations respond and I believe that we responded at first step to survive and now we are responding to try and kind of thrive I come from a life insurance industry and I'd like to state I the previous speaker also from insurance that life insurance is a bloody push category right no one wants to talk about death and this is the traditional industry where you have to have a person in front of you so in this era where suddenly we realize that you can't meet people they will throw you out they will always kind of pushing you away we discuss life insurance not even worse how would we survive frankly if I want to play this game again I don't think I'll reach to where we've reached because we would have too many doubts in our mind we managed on a daily basis we didn't know frankly what's going to happen tomorrow and that's when even for organizations certain hunches played and we gave credence to our hunches we didn't do over analysis and paralysis like organizations do but we realized a few things organizations like us realized that we had to turn our entire ecosystem into a tested ecosystem therefore within 30 days all are within 15 days actually all our employees are working from home so digitization we started to engage with all our customers basically and my sellers largely my proprietary sellers are not bank staff well a lot of us says this gets done by bank staff but they are the young guys 27, 30, 32 my agents are upwards of 40, 45 years old so but the realization was that they adapted so fast that they became they became diseases almost and they were questioning us who we thought were very, very smart digitally but our entire adoption of that using all technologies BI, AI, BAIT, AI, BAIT websites everything else tons of initiatives happened in 30 days flat you asked me to play it again I will take maybe 300 days to do that in my planning itself I will take 30 days to plan itself so I think that they were the real heroes for us to bring our businesses back of course life insurance is a business that sadly so thrives when the outcomes are a little bit dire so yeah businesses have grown but there's a way you can tell you an amount of banks how they went through you know changes so that was also an important part from an organization perspective I think digital and data data has become the most important aspect for all of us and that's actually enabled by digital because the digital ecosystem that allows all of us to understand the data so data I believe at least data is the new oil I mean it's the big data you can talk about all these nice terms are real but we are now able to understand every second of a customer because he's leaving all these indications through all his cookies and everything else and he's moved into digital platforms almost now for what three times over what he was doing prior five hours in a day he's on the social platforms so for us for anybody for that matter who is who is focused on customer data has to be core to him at the same time I think customers were increasingly feeling anxious as we studied when the pandemic broke out the level of anxiety went through the roof we were getting numerous number of calls from our customers on our call centers on our websites and only asking one question is my policy covering COVID and how much ever you went back to them proactively or reactively the question would repeat itself for almost three to four months till our regulator came in to the game and said yes all policies approved by that's our regulator covers for COVID so that kind of put things down but there are two things that you must pick out a bit differentially over here unlike other things and we will add to this we are highly regulated industry right money is serious business so whatever changes we have to adapt to have to AB number one which takes time and it's the biggest challenge that we face but also the regulator has to allow a certain freedom and I must say that the regulators across the country have been quite proactive they could be always better but that's always the more attitude but yeah it takes us time for the regulator to really give us the freedom to adapt and it's money business we can't do five by nine kind of operations everybody wants uberization of everything so to uberize financial services it is a different kettle of fish then movie tickets and book my show and the rest so yeah on the customer side is anxiety his impatience he wanted everything like back of his umbrella quickly enough and we also realize through various consumer insights that the customer is now more here and now focused because he wants to ensure that he is first safe and then he will plan for other milestones so for me as an industry where life insurance is milestone based product we were fearing that the consumers will delay the purchase decision and will go for more here and now but I think the consumers were the customers were a bit more anxious than what we thought and our insurance demand started to grow up you know we did a survey just now with the with the with Kantar and we realized that while death has always been a taboo conversation in India vis-a-vis the west but there is some conversation that is happening in the families which is around death now that is a very important tipping point from a life insurance perspective so how do we enable that conversation to result in a purchase decision is the journey we have to traverse and that journey can only be traveled successfully if your if your engagement is digital and is quick the longer you leave the customer to take a decision the more the decision will be postponed so digital becomes a very important aspect there is one last point I want to talk about the customer over here then I will hand it over I guess I have taken too long while the customers anxieties went up extremely they were looking for a partner to help them go through this journey so brands that kind of kept quiet are not the brands they are looking for they are looking for brands who are constantly holding their hand and making them walk this tough path so at least from our point of view we ran out initiators which said there is a theme called close to customer get closer to the customer get to where he is instead of getting him to where you are in any case branches were closed for a fair part of the time so we had to get to where the customer was on social platforms our website had to be completely re-oriented to make it more customer focused a lot of dependence on DIY kind of transactions so we turned around our website our website traffic increased almost by 3 times and I will just let you leave you with this that customers started to value trust much more the brand that exudes trust would be something that they will reach out to but trust also means you got to be authentic you can't be in a sales organization format you know you can't be in this typical sale variety but you have to be more you know compassionate towards him I read somewhere I will quote from there that's not my quote but I will quote from there it touched me from a customer perspective from an organization point of view heart is the new brain so lot of us are bankers and insurance guys are mathematically left brain guys the brand that is more right brain is the brand I believe at least we believe that is something that will sustain itself so for the brand guys you have to be more compassionate you have to be more authentic you have to be more real you have to move on more understanding and like the previous spokesperson said life insurance or insurance is a bloody complex product it is depended on human interface so hopefully all of us in the industry are cracking the basic issues with life insurance getting into conversations that are more stories and consumers are looking for us to walk with them and not leave them alone and wait for them to come back because when they come back they are not going to come back to a brand that is kept quiet that's been the theme that we have operated in and we are hoping that as time goes by we will grow we are growing right now at an organizational level but yeah it could be better thank you thank you very well said carrying these sentiments forward I would like to put forth my next question to you Ravi while hyper connectivity brings a massive opportunity for marketers to communicate across all areas of the martech stack it also brings with it challenges in communication connecting effectively across a fragmented customer experience so do you agree and what according to you is the key to architect a relevant connected consumer experience I think the question is extremely complicated lots of words which have been put together to get you a feel that it is a tough space to be in it's not as tough as it is made out to be so if I look at the bank for example 90% of the transactions were digital before the pandemic so people are not walking into the branch so as Alok was explaining the biggest change for us is the ability of our sales people to accept it but at the end of the day you have to understand maturity levels of different organizations different places before and I can understand the insurance experience is what we used to look up to in terms of their fulfillment but sales is still very tough but for the banks transactions were anyway happening on the digital platform so how do you bring the sale the biggest challenge for us was to get the sales people accept digital which has happened because of the pandemic so in this hyper connected world what connectivity has improved because of the pandemic nothing what was there in January 2020 and what is there in January 2021 is exactly the same so nothing has changed what has changed this people are willing to experiment a lot more and Alok was talking about a touch less world I want people to touch their phones rather than go to any other place take up the phone and talk to somebody for the sale which used to happen in the banking space I'm saying don't go there touch your phone so for me it is going to touch it's not touch less when it comes to swiping the car I went and said don't do anything tap and pay and go so it depends on the category that you're looking at and the problem for any kind of a hyper connected world and the hyper connected experience is all about the ability to put the data together and now there are customers who are coming and looking at our website because it became the first port of call in terms of what needs to be done what is the products that you have what is the solution that you have to offer and the challenges for example is most of the websites of most of the organizations are more sales focused than service focused so what the pandemic taught us is when suddenly the call center which is your biggest service center in terms of ability to get a call done and satisfy Indians like cally call centers that we should accept they're not used to self service mode and do it yourself service on a chat or on a kind of a bot or on the way finding their own information on the net so what we need to do is to change our own attitude towards what needs to be put on the website and how much more we can do in terms of creating those self service capabilities on our bots so today for example we have got more than 35 transactions of both banking as well as in the card enabled in the last 6 months because we found that people are finding it difficult to reach the call centers and we had people problem in terms of having people come into the call centers so all these things are the ones which we changed now the hyper connectivity and the experiences people are looking at the website and now they're having a problem are you going to go and send a message saying that buy my life insurance policy that I am the agent of say max or an ICSA or a HDFC live and say that at that point of time that's not the best thing to do the best thing is to do is to figure out the customer is actually looking at a service experience issue and are we going to go ahead and talk about it with the customer rather than talking about the product sale that is going to happen so for me it's all about putting the data together and then starting off with that as a base what is the next best action to be done that's very insightful and it's truly about you very rightly mentioned truly about both businesses and consumers being digitally savvy in a digital or a hyper connected area so moving on digital banking isn't you know isn't new but with covid pandemic indian suddenly flocks to online and mobile banking so my next question is to you Sachin the online lending platforms have witnessed a big spike over the past 11 months and with physical banking resuming is this upstick uptake in traffic here to stay yeah thanks Arsha actually you know like Alok sir and Ravi sir they rightly said that the pandemic actually forced us both from a consumers point of view as well as from the providers point of view to think digital as the mainstream channel being the digital first organization we have been advocating that since our inception that digital is the way forward right and we are in both insurance as well as banking so we somewhat know the entire process and the challenges which provider as well as consumer facing just to give you an example you know before pandemic if it comes to insurance or last ticket insurance had a medical cycle of it right and it suddenly came to a halt especially in the month of April and May and the way all these insurance companies especially max ICIC and all the leading companies how they you know figured out a alternate way to that you know the way they created the alternate go to market you know way to tackle that that was really brilliant similarly from the banking part of it like Ravi sir said that transactions were happening online but the sales piece was offline and largely because both these industries are heavily regulated so you needed you know KYC to be done in person there has there was an executive of a bank going to the customer doing all the signatures doing the KYC collecting all the documents and then the final dispersal was happening right the pandemic forced us to think alternate to that this entire process and that's why most of these banks they've started as well as us we started working on our digital stack how can we bring and map this particular process online right and in a way it has changed both these especially you know insurance and banking industry all together and not changed completely but at least you know forced us to think in that direction as far as your question is concerned whether consumer will you know be back on the offline lending or offline part of it or will they keep coming on to the digital landing platforms right digital is all about convenience and speed right when it comes to you know getting a service people wanted as soon as possible people want you know it to people they don't want to get them in a very conveniently they don't want to you know get into complex processes they don't want to get into you know the hazards of it they just want the service of the product to reach them right and digital is the best way to that and consumers have experienced that providers have started working or you know creating an environment or I will say platform to you know cater to these kind of a you know request and then you know starts or whether it will take a somewhat more time before the thing before things settle digital will keep on growing be it lending insurance or any other category I see Ravi I just I don't what Sachin said see there is this threshold of irreversibility concept once a certain way of doing things populations start doing it that way then there is no going back it's like for example in your anger days maybe not your anger days maybe in my anger days I remember going to a train station to book a long distance return ticket now if I go and tell my daughter that I used to go to a train station to book a long distance train ticket she says why are you not doing a mobile because that's what they have seen so if all of us have moved to IRCTC to ticket in the way in the mobile it's extremely difficult to go back and find an agent to book a rare ticket there is a threshold of irreversibility which gets crossed in my view for many of the industries the threshold of irreversibility has been crossed in certain areas during this pandemic once it has been crossed it is impossible for people to go back like for example as a credit card the issuer we understand how many people are buying groceries we all understand the economy very easily travel is down, dining is down entertainment is down and that is one of the three of the biggest categories of spend of consumers like Lakshman and Alok and all those people right now in spite of all those being down and we also have a business card portfolio which is primarily given to people like them when they are transactions and volumes on card in December is higher than January why because people all of us who have never bought in Big Bazaar a grocery has gone ahead and bought because of the pandemic now that you are used to the convenience of it coming home and in certain towns and places like Bombay where traffic is a pain, parking is a pain I don't think people are going to go back to the neighborhood grocery and buy it they will still go for their bread and eggs and all those stuff so this is the consumer behavior that we see so there is no way that people are not going to come back to digital and if you see another angle of what Sachin looks at it is primarily the small ticket loans which have increased people are not going to go into a digital platform to take a 50 lakhs home loan that's not going to happen what is going to happen and what is happening today is the 5000 rupee loan and the 10000 rupee loan where multiple people are going to do and those things will happen only digitally otherwise there is no economic sense also of doing that because you can't have a collection cost you can't have a origination cost this pandemic has changed behaviors and threshold of irreversibility has been crossed in many areas Sachin has a great feature that much I can tell you very well said I think we should we are looking forward to see what is going to stay as a new normal now I think this is what we have been talking about right so taking this discussion a step forward so we are now entering an era where customer engagement takes place in real time over apps of customers choice where the mobile interface goes beyond customer expectations and they are an API platform offers new opportunities laying the foundation of an invisible institution so thanks to the state technology financial sectors are the biggest users of artificial intelligence machine learning and predictive technology so Lakshman we would like to hear your views on how are you using these tools to make the customer experience more personalized and in a non-intrusive way or manner thank you Arsha and warm welcome to all the participants and the co-panelists so before I answer this question let me give a background of Given Small Finance Bank so we have close to 5 million customers and most of them walk into the branches because we primarily serve the unserved and underserved customers which is the aspiring middle class which is adapting into different digital banking for them the entire aspect of digital banking is quite deep which having said that yes the pandemic brought one quality out among the employees as well as the customers is the resilience the resilience to adapt to the situation the environment around them their ability to experiment and be open to the fact that yes there is an alternative way to banking more importantly we broke out and we did chanta connect which means that we called out each and every customer and explained to them what covid was all about say in a mass affluent or H&I segment it is assumed that you will know because we have information across but that was not the case with us we had to reach out and explain to them what covid 19 was what was EMI moratorium all about how can you avail them so the fact that even today for us the assisted service aspect is very big so we need to just take a peek back to 1800s where the foundation for artificial intelligence and machine language was laid out by one human and enduring out there and if one way to go I can tell if one way to make a movie how 2021 would look in 1800 it might probably sound quite silly and say no there is such a possibility even exist the fact is that now if you were to leapfrog ourselves 200 years ahead and 100% sure that API would be the order of the day like the way we do our mobile banking yes today for example there are a lot of new banks we are building our strong API banking system because automated platforms especially in areas of marketing we are building it but more importantly we need to bear in mind the fact that our consumers are more familiar with the voice video and vernacular so whatever we converse okay for so I mean it's not a literal google translation let's say no so you have to be very very sensitive to ethnic aspects the way the words are spoken to the way so for us the poor aspect of having a relationship with the customer it is based on empathy and respect so the fact that we always when we say customer centricity for us no the first thing that we responded to when the covid happened was are our customers safe can we ensure their safety can we ensure their well-being so even today when we are designing technology not just the customer front end but the entire back end perspective the idea is that how do you de-mystify the entire concept of banking you know for them just to enter the bank with so much paperwork and all is something that they are not used to and their banking experience is predominantly limited so how do you still give them the state of the art banking by being while making it so very convenient and easy so for example we have the API platform that we are building today enables us to connect with all the you know the fintech firms so that we are able to connect with them and offer services on the go so the idea is that in every interface that you are building in today of course we are at baby steps as I said we need to start moving from assisted to self-service and that's quite a distance away even during the assisted mode of service can I make the conversation just not relating to the fact that no you need to adopt to mobile banking but the fact that why it is safe and trustworthy and how can you utilize the same amount of time for doing something better in fact the very core concept is how do you enable financial freedom for the masses because when they progress is that when the nation and the community at large progresses the biggest lesson that we learn during the deep monetization is the fact that we started financial literacy programs in a very big way fact that we also had the richer experience of being an NBFC MFI so we have trained over one lakh to one lakh financial literacy programs we have reached out to over one lakh customers we also have tied up to our short take other initiatives wherein we identify projects which are it could be with our customers so we do a co-creation of projects with our customers in terms of identifying whether you need to build a school or a bus stop so the idea is that we work very closely with our customers to understand how, so let's say even if I have to evolve my mobile platform or my internet banking or build my API stack how is the customer thinking because it is evolving with every region and every state it is differing so how do you integrate the whole aspect of it so for example we have tied up with Airtel banking outlets and those are beyond the 10 kilometer radius of branch the idea is to get the customer to walk into that store who can experience the first-hand aspect of how you can bank digitally but at the same time there is someone at the store to assist you so and we have Manimithra outlets equally which are given led outlets to promote the whole thing so whether it be a fund transfer or a cash deposit or a cash withdrawal so what we are realizing is that one we need to speak their language at any point in time we still need to have some form of assisted service and three as we slowly progress them into various modes of banking we need to ensure that the entire aspect is convenient and more importantly that we need to assure them that it is safe and sound and trustworthy so for us the journey is more about building trust into that relationship building trust by being empathetic to the needs of the customer and respecting them for what they are and the fact that despite the challenges they are willing to embrace in whatever way they can and we believe that that's how we are building this agile technology and we believe that and we are confident that going forward in terms of providing the entire artificial or leveraging the artificial intelligence machine language we would be able to understand our customer needs better combine the analytics platform as well as the various social media listening platforms and no further build on to not only the products and services but a better and a simpler way to communicate with the customers absolutely you know moving forward so there is no doubt that we are witnessing an increasing development sorry just wanted to add to one point just a bit of a on the funnier side most things we were talking about in 1800s we wouldn't have imagined in 2021 at least I imagined it thanks to Datrek in my time they would say if you remember Captain Kirk and you guys won't remember I guess I'm hoping that Ravi will bear with me on this one just taking by the color of the hair that Ravi nothing more than that don't take it otherwise you know when they used to say energize and you would see that these guys appear somewhere else this is what we are in zoom right now we are all sitting in different places but talking to each other so look at sky-five movies 1863 John Orwell is a very good example of what next in place 1663 is not my time but no look for sky-five movies I'm talking about the book absolutely absolutely so you know just looking at the time that we have just one final question so there is no doubt that we are witnessing an increasing demand in the digital banking experience from millennials and the Genziers transmuting how the entire industry operates so consumers growing desire to access let's say financial services from digital channels has led to a gush new banking technologies that are re-conceptualizing the banking industry so India is leading the next megaships boosted by digital transformation a very significant reality of today's hyper-connected world is the understanding that what got us here will not get us to where we aim to go next technology will drive a deep fundamental mega shift in the sector our world will change more in the next 20 years than it has in the past 200 years so you know just a final concluding question to all the pandas here with a strong digital foundation and only channel strategy how can financial organizations pivot further down the road and what is your advice to the financial services and banking institutions to become future ready maybe a quick view from each panelist as we don't have much time maybe 50 seconds for each one of you so we can start with Ravi hearing your views I will not tell my secret it's our story everybody jokes apart I think the road is pretty clear consumers have adopted digital there's no question of saying or adopting digital it's a question of more use cases to be enabled for them and we should always be clear about what's happening and we should have the ability to look at the corner of our eyes and see who is going to disturb us next so it's better to be self-destructive and create something new rather than allowing somebody else to come and do it it's a regulated industry so obviously there will be some challenges for a new player to come in but people are playing on the basis of their ability to do it so you should be in a position to anticipate what your consumer likes better than somebody else right right Lakshman what would be your advice my view I think the way the smartphone industry has evolved today we have android as well as ios I think standardized banking platforms standardized blockchain platforms will evolve and I think it is a playoff no joint science whether the new banks join hands with the large banks small banks across the board to create that deception I think we will see that happening in the next areas okay Sachin let's hear from you yeah so like so while you know people have started adopting digital digital you know people have started saying that digital is the way forward huge scope still so while in marketing we have started adopting various technologies for last few years now especially in last one and a half years when all these on my channel AI, AML, chatbot etc etc they came in but you know as far as banking or BFSI is concerned the huge scope of these technologies especially in the customer service segment which is even today it's highly human dependent process you know we have huge call centers you know where people usually call and they are like Ravi said they like Alok said that people would want to speak to humans you know for clarification to get their services address to get their things addressed so there's a huge scope in this service domain apart from that you know BFSI is blamed to be a very serious and monotonous industry right so and like you rightly said that more and more million years and youngsters are you know trying to get the first financial product be it insurance or you know credit card or something else we have to start speaking their language right we have to be slightly more vibrant you know slightly more like Alok said that heart is the new brain so we have to start thinking from the heart rather than applying pain everywhere absolutely and Alok what would be your suggestions I think A really enjoyed a lot of interesting conversations I would say three things you know Harsha I would hold my stake and say that yeah maybe fidgetful I think I don't think we're still in the root of replacing a human being at least in my category but as a progressive organization we have to adopt digital and I like to use the word fidgetful I prefer to use the word digitify so more digital but the physical influence I mean I like Ravi said touch the mobile we believe in the fact of the confluence between the 70 kilo human being and the 70 gram mobile that is really where the future lies and I will still insist that as marketers we have to drive the narratives for the organization at large somebody has to carry the consumer flag and I think it leads from the marketers because that's the final answer to all our problems so therefore I insist the heart will still have to remain the new brain the right brain will win not the left brain data critical but not complete that's it thank you Alok so while hearing the views of all the pandas today I picked up some keywords that are very meaningful and very impactful in relation to topic of discussion today so I'm going to say consumer continues to change customer centricity right authenticity compassion trust secure convenience speed resilience hand holding very important data digital adoption and engagement and hardest the new brain so putting all this together we can broadly conclude that today's customer expect relevant content in relation to what they are doing any time anywhere in the format on the device of their choosing it's their journey that dictates your strategy and in order to keep up with the new kind of always connected not the financial sector but all businesses must waste the quality to deliver an unmatched customer experience and going forward as the world becomes more connected deeper amalgamation and alliance is the key to successful and secured hyper connected world in the BFSI sector and there should be a vigorous linkage between offering process and value addition in the technology on the other hand as financial establishments look in a word to stiffen their technology integrations the consumers will notice a sequence of changes that will provide them with a unified experience on that note let me wind up by a few for your time and valuable insights it was indeed a very enlightening and illuminating session thank you all once again thank you everyone once again and I just joining us on this Thursday with info bit a special series brought to you by exchange for media in association with info bit and what a lovely session it was thank you everyone for your time hope to see you soon thank you the exchange for media team at the info bit team for making this possible see you soon and stay safe thank you thank you everyone