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As we celebrated the 73rd Republic Day, it ignited so many thoughts! It’s a festival that celebrates India becoming a true sovereign nation on 26th January 1950, following us gaining our independence on 15th August 1947. We bid goodbye to the British monarchy to become a self-reliant republic.
This day reminds me of a whole bunch of different achievements by us, viz. how well the nation building exercise has been carried out by the multiple governments of different ideologies; how strong the pillars of democracy have evolved; how we have built the strong foundations for various institutions such as the RBI, our judiciaries, the IITs, the IIMs etc. that further shaped the glorious fortune for India and so on. On this occasion, I couldn’t resist but to also reminisce about how well my own industry, the software industry, has contributed towards building the modern age India and the way we live our lives today. It has been an exciting journey, for sure!
Before I step there, let me confess that I watched “Jamtara” on Netflix quite late! It is a brilliant web-series that portrays how a group of small-town young men run a lucrative phishing operation on a mixed and large sample of individuals across the socio-economic strata, to commit a financial fraud that was ever thought of by the experts in finance field. It was a refreshing, yet quite thought provoking, watch that made me think – technology is not just an enabler, it can create havoc if not used for the right reasons. It has its own boons and curses.
One thing is certain: thanks to the modern software / technology, we have come a long way in the BFSI (banking, finance, securities and insurance industry) space. Back in 2003, I remember working on the development of the IT platform for the CDSL (i.e. the Central Depository Services Limited). I must admit, everything has revolutionised since then! Right from the way we perform banking activities; the way we carry out online transactions; the way we apply for loans; the way we buy and sell financial securities such as equities/ derivatives / mutual funds etc.; the way we buy insurances and so on. The availability of high-speed internet, secured access layers and abundance of data in recent years has got the BFSI literally to our fingertips!
Now a days, I can’t imagine myself going to a bank branch unless I have some dispute to be resolved. For the ‘business as usual’ needs, I practically can do away from interacting with my bank or the bank staff. The bank and the investment web portals now offer even more personalised experience, with the arrival of mobile banking and asset management applications, whereby I can practically do anything and everything under the sun. My bank is at my fingertips and in my pocket!
Technology has also simplified not just banking, but also our investments, personal finance and insurance related matters. In a way, the Indian IT industry’s global exposure, primarily to the US and European clients, has helped them a lot to conceptualise and implement solutions to e-revolutionise the BFSI space.
It was hard to imagine this sitting in my South Mumbai office back in 2003 that India would achieve all this and more in less than two decades! Having said this, I would also say that this first wave of IT revolution has been more focused on the transactional infrastructure. A lot is yet to be added to the maturity of this model
As India progresses on its journey from being a developing economy to a developed one, the cost of skilled manpower (such as skilled labour, graduates, doctors, lawyers, IT professionals / engineers etc.) is steadily increasing.
Given this, the next wave of revolution in the IT space is expected to be about transforming all such ‘human centric’ activities to a ‘machine centric’ infrastructure and solutions, where a machine will play a significant role in building a cognitive intelligence for any business process and replace the human intervention to a large extent.
The IT world is already moving steadily from digital transactions to digital intelligence. Digital infrastructure is being increasingly used in the cognitive space than just to perform buy / sell transactions, to shop and to transfer money etc.
Let’s see a couple of interesting examples of how the customer interactions are transforming in the BFSI space:
Use of AVR and Chat Bots - Earlier, when one used to get stuck whilst performing any banking transaction online, calling the customer care number was the way to go. For any query, the phone banking call centre executive used to speak to us. However now, the automated voice response (AVR) interface greets you! A large subset of our queries is addressed by the AVR and most of it makes us happy too. Very few of the queries that cannot be handled by the AVR are attended to by a human being. Indeed, “Press zero to speak to a phone banking officer” is increasingly becoming only the last resort!
A year ago, while I was formalising a health insurance claim for my family, I didn’t even remember calling the customer care and speaking to any of the insurance company staff. Most of my queries, including on the gradual progress of settlement of the claim, were conveyed to me by the Chat Bot that was part of the insurance company web portal and the mobile app!
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Many banks have now started to understand customer queries through voice recognition, over their interactive voice response (‘IVR’) platforms. Earlier, only the responses from the bank were over the automated voice, whereas the customer was required to press buttons on his phone to select the appropriate choices / queries. The next level of response automation is through asking the customers to speak to the IVR, to get their queries resolved! Of course, it does mean that the IT infrastructure should be built with great deal of voice modulation and accent neutralisation techniques.
Indeed, these techniques are the boons of the next generation Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technology, with Big Data as the backbone of it.
These days, internet banking can practically do away with human intervention. The next age IVR interfaces would further enhance and leverage the machine’s cognitive abilities. Imagine, when you call a customer care number in the future, you may be able to talk to the IVR just the way you talk to your relationship manager, and get your smart queries answered as well. The conversation might go as follows:
IVR: “Hello Mr. XYZ, how are you doing today? You have three bank accounts with us, two of them are savings account, with account numbers ending with 1234 and 5678; and a current account ending with 6789. Which one would you like to know further about?”
Customer: “I would like to know all the food and medicine related expenses for the last month from my account ending with 5678.”
IVR: “Sure sir.”
And then the IVR would go on detailing the relevant debit transactions from your choice of account!
Similarly, the machine would understand “travel expenses”, “credit card spends”, “kids’ education expenses”, “salary income”, “investment spends”, “domestic vs international spends” and so on. It would also be able to give you a comparative analysis of – how much you spent on food when you were working from home vs. when you were in office just by looking at your ‘location’ details during the work days.
I know you may feel that it’s a little too much to achieve, but there’s not an element of exaggeration in this imagination! When you look at how we used to carry out our banking transactions 25 years ago vs. how we perform them today, it’s just a matter of time when intelligently equipped machines will analyse and tell you everything that you are looking for in no time!
The future belongs to such smart technology that would transform India of the future! We should engage with the young minds to constructively transform our nation. What better day than today to dream about this technologically transformed India!
