Financial organisations should accelerate innovation with speed, break down team barriers and have agile operating models to make an impact, said State Bank of India CS Shetty.
Delivering the keynote address at the ETBFSI CIO Digital Conclave 2024, he said, “To be impactful you have to achieve the scale which is applicable to both smaller and larger organisations. Innovation and prudence combined is necessary in this current regulatory environment.”
He said innovation should be able to achieve scale to make an impact.
Speaking on innovation by the State Bank of India, he said the SBI has spent significant time and energy in making our products and services accessible to customers.
Shetty said that financial organisations need to focus on attracting and retaining top talent, fostering continuous training, and incentivising the culture of innovation that requires risk taking and experimentation.
He said SBI has innovated by deploying its 84,000 business correspondents to manage the huge number of Jan Dhan accounts.
SBI managed 14 crore Jan Dhan accounts which were zero balance accounts. Today 99% are funded. On an aggregate basis, they contribute Rs 55,000 crore to CASA (current account, saving account).
He said SBI innovated by deploying its business correspondent network, which is the largest banking channel in the country.
On digital transformation, he said, “In 2016, we embarked on a very important journey of mobile banking…and today the flagship mobile application of SBI —YONO has got 70 million registered users. On average about 1.5 crore people log in to this app and last year we did loans worth 1 lakh crore through YONO.”
Tech advancements and competition are driving down the cost of financial services, he said, adding that the cost of mobile transfer of money has declined 75% in the past five years today.
He said expectations driven by consumer sectors are raising expectations in the financial sector, adding that companies should aim to become global leaders in innovation.
