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Will RBI blink and give banking licences to Big Tech firms?

The participants at a panel discussion on Engaging The Customer of The Future at ETBFSI CXO Conclave think so.

“I feel RBI is giving banks time. I don’t think RBI will be able to stop Google and Amazon from getting licences for a long time, but it’s giving the much-needed time to banks,” Ankit Ratan, Co-Founder & CEO, Signzy.

Today, if Google comes and gets a banking licence, they will crush banks, he said, adding that technology is ever-changing and the competition is always doing something new.

Abhijeet Bhattacharjee, CIO, Utkarsh Small Finance Bank, said customers can together open a bank app and Amazon app on their phones. “So you shouldn’t just compare with the fellow bank apps but with every app on that phone, the ecosystem is big,” he said.

Stating that loyalty always comes with the second product, Bhattacharjee said, “We need to think through what customer wants not from the bank perspective but from a digital ecosystem perspective.”

Customer-first approach

Madhu Malhotra, CTO, Zuno General Insurance, said while it was always about a customer-first approach, today the stage of customer centricity has evolved to a level where business strategies are built keeping customers at the centre.

“Some brands demand loyalty. Today’s customers are divided. They have more power. The older generation believes more in trust,” Malhotra said.

Vaidyanathan V, CIO, Unity Small Finance Bank, said loyalty from customers is impossible today. “Customers will shift to banks which offer better rates, better products no matter what you do. I can choose newer technology to address the customers who are shifting all the time.”

Balaji Srinivasan, ED & CTO, DreamFolks surmised that disruption may be about continuous improvement or sometimes about questioning what customers are liking and not liking, what can be added to the journey and acting accordingly. “You have to at times fundamentally question the journey.”

  • Published On Sep 1, 2023 at 05:44 PM IST

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