In a world that is witness to headwinds and cases of bank failures in the United States, the banking sector in India has been able to showcase an ability to weather several financial shocks thus far. Many of the leading Indian banks are also among the most profitable ones in the world and that too with tight regulations. Apart from stability, India’s digital surge in the financial sector has now emerged as a new beacon of hope for several economies, especially on the payments side. However, there is still an arduous journey ahead with efforts clearly now needed on ways to leverage the gains and enhance India’s credit to GDP ratio, stay watchful of any potential systemic risks while allowing multiple bank and non-bank players to operate, deepen the penetration of insurance/ micro-insurance, credit and other financial saving instruments. While investing right and investing more may remain the watchwords with an eye on cost and value, there is little denying that the Indian BFSI sector is undergoing a transformative period of dismantling legacy systems and bringing in advanced technology.
In the light of these and more, Financial Express Online organised the second edition of FE Modern BFSI Summit in Mumbai on June 16th where some of the brightest minds, thought leaders, policy makers, A-listers from the banking, financial services and insurance arena brainstormed, discussed, deliberated and swapped ideas.
The summit began with a fireside chat with Dilip Asbe, the dapper, persuasive and mission-oriented CEO of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). To many, he is the face of the transformational UPI (Unified Payments Interface) in India and is busy taking it global. Launched in 2016, the platform accounts for a bulk of non-cash retail payments in India. While he continues to focus on expanding the global footprint, he is on a mission to deepen the presence within India.
This session was followed by a panel discussion by some of the leaders from the Indian banking and financial services arena – Dinesh Kumar Khara, the Chairman of State Bank of India (SBI), Gopal Srinivasan, the founder of TVS Capital Funds, Murali Ramakrishnan, the managing director and CEO of South Indian Bank and Sabyasachi Goswami, the CEO of Perfios.
Dinesh Kumar Khara felt that while we live in an interconnected world and risks are universal, what really most is the ability to visualise and put in place the regulations so that the system stays insulated and this was one key reason why despite the headwinds globally and developments like the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, Indian banking stayed insulated. Gopal Srinivasan talked about how India had quite unwittingly democratised innovation with innovation not just confined to startups, public or the private sector but even the regulators and government institutions becoming active participants in this.
Ramakrishnan from the South Indian Bank saw this as the time for India and with credit penetration slated to increase, focus had to be on customer safety and customer data. The regulators, he felt, were not only playing a catalytic role in supporting innovation but were also working on making it all effective. In this context, he referred to the recent guidelines on FLDG (First Loan Default Guarantee) with default cover for up to 5 per cent of the loan portfolio under the FLDG framework. Goswami from Perfios felt while much progress had been made there was still some distance to be covered to effectively use the data generated to address some of the pain points. He pointed specifically to not just get to improve customer experience but also make a difference for the banking staff and more so when there are technology solutions available to facilitate this.
This was followed by an Industry-speak session by Sandeep Sharma, managing director, cloud business (APAC) for Check Point. He spoke about how to effectively manage cyber risks in a cloud environment. Talking of the experience of Checkpoint over the past 30 years, he spoke of the trends that were evident over the past five to six years and the new imperatives to have risk prevention-led approach.
Thereafter some of the leading CIOs from the BFSI arena took to the stage and kept the audience enthralled in a session focussed on the need for effective digital transformation. It had as panellists Om Prakash Seth, CIO from IDBI Bank, Deepak Sharma, chief digital office at Kotak Mahindra Bank, Prashant Thakkar, chief of operations and technology officer at LIC Mutual Fund, Sandeep Ranjan, chief digital officer at Shriram Housing Finance and Sivakumar Nandipati, the chief digital officer at Fedbank. The session was moderated by a Kunal Pande, partner at KPMG.
The following panel discussion on insurance was led by Vishakha R M, MD & CEO, IndiaFirst Life Insurance Company, who set the stage for discussion with her opening remarks and deliberated subsequently by others from the industry and these included M Anand, president, SBI Life Insurance, Prasad Krishnamorthy, Vice President, products at Perfios. The session was moderated by Amit Roy, partner , insurance and allied businesses at PwC India. Among other things, the discussion focussed on the road to universal coverage. The subsequent session on cybersecurity also engaged the attention of the audience. Some 240 CXOs across the various domains of the BFSI sector attended the summit.
The cybersecurity session had Manoj Sarangi, chief information security officer at the NSDL Payments Bank, Mohinder Pal Arora, DGM & head of Networking & IT security at the Union Bank of India, Praveen Mishra, CISO at Axis Finance.
What also stood out in the summit was a special address by Rajesh Bansal, CEO at the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub. He spoke on the innovation in products and solutions and the importance of customer centricity in it.
The penultimate session of the day was the CFOs and it was amply clear on how they were leveraging technology and how it was enabling them to take quicker decisions. This session had panellists that included: Kunal Sanghavi, CFO, HDFC Securities, Kapish Jain, Group CFO, IIFL and Kanishka Chaudhary, CFO, Suryoday Small Finance Bank.
The day concluded with a session on cloud and the new imperatives. On discussion were points around the right cloud strategy, the pace of cloud adoption and on nurturing the talent in this space. The panellists here included: Kirti Patil, joint president -IT & CTO, Kotak Life Insurance, Ramkumar Raveendran, head of cloud and DevOps at HSBC India, Abhijit Singh, chief technology & digital officer at HDFC, Ajay Patil, head, IT infrastructure at HDB Financial Services.
The FE Modern BFSI Summit 2023 had Perfios as the platinum partner, Kyndryl as technology partner, Check Point as the associate partner and Signzy as the KYC partner.