Banking On Analytics Is The Way Forward

Technology has taken BFSI segment to a different level and analytics provided the path to this development. The process of understanding analytics in depth called for the BW Businessworld's and Wipro's 'Banking on Analytics' event in Mumbai on 7 September 2017.

"We are all banking on analytics," said Pinky Sahu, GM & SL Head Analytics - India, Wipro in her opening session at the event. She further explained the changing trends in banking where she pointed out 480 million USD spent by banks in 2016 alone for information and technology. With evolution in technology expectations of consumers have changed and banks have to ensure the right kind of infrastructure in order to attract more customers.

Pinky stated that in order to drive customer behavior, banks and financial institutions need to understand factors like personalisation where they ensure each customer is treated individually. Instant gratification is another factor where customers need to be provided with all services digitally. Followed by simplification, automation and ubiquity where customers need an omni channel.

While explaining further she observed, "Banks are increasing their spend on data and analytics by 60 per cent" Shashi Kumar Ravulapaty, Senior VP and CTO, Reliance Capital who spoke at the event opined about fraud analytics. "We have 3 types of fraud analytics: Fraud score, anomaly detection and network analysis," he said.Talking about the analytics, he stated that it was a never ending journey. He explained that it is always up to the organization to understand the kind of data they want to use and if rightly used it can also help them for seeing the trends in the future also.
In analytics, prediction and knowing the future has been a routine. Hence, the financial institutions can benefit immensely with the help of data and analytics.
 
A panel discussion on 'Getting more from your Analytics' which was followed gave insights on various aspects of analytics such as status check, how to measure ROI on analytics, making analytics and BI smarter with AI among other topics.
 
Participating in the discussion, Uday Shankar, Head - Sales and Solutions. India Analytics, Wipro said, "We have to identify who is the right customer first, and then find out what is the right product for him/her and identify how to execute it."
He further explained that identifying the problem areas and the outcome of the business is also important. "Analytics alone is not going to solve all the problems," he added.
 
Kiran Krishnarao Surve, Program Manager, BFSI, Wipro opined that the social media sentiments can impact the customers positively and at times negatively also. Analytics on social media sentiments can make a difference to your business in today's world," he said by adding that analytics is the back bone of lending. Identify the areas which are not yet explored is the future for BFSI, like small industries which are going to prosper, Surve urged the delegates.
 
"Analytics journey needs to go a long way and the companies have to do cognitive learning," opined Anasuya Chaudhuri Ghosh, Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Edelweiss Tokio. Elaborating further, she said, "We use analytics for the sales purpose, where to open a branch etc. Analytics helps us to identify what we are going to achieve in a given time." Analytics helps us to make right decisions faster, she added.
 
Based on his experience, Suresh A. Shan, Head - IT & Innovation, Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services said that the rural India moves on emotions and climatic conditions. "We need to track those information and data for analytics," said Shan. Analytics can be done through known and unknown (predictable) information, he opined.
 
N. Rajendran, Chief Technology Officer, National Payment Corporation of India observed that In ATM payment system, the decision has to be taken in fraction of seconds. "There should be enough data to analyze about the location of withdrawal, when was the last withdrawal done and from which location and about the current location etc. to prevent fraudulent transactions," said Rajendran. "Analytics is going to play a major role not just in payments, but across the segments," he added.
 
According to Nitin Agarwal, Vice President & Head - Digital Solutions, SBI Mutual Fund, personalization of customers, having a proper pattern of investments and customer service are the factors which will make a difference in mutual fund industry. "When a customer calls, the agent should know every detail about the customer such as when he/she called last, was the problem solved etc. Analytics is helping us to know our customers and distributors better," he said. End to end analytics is the future according to Agarwal. "After analyzing a customer's risk profile, it is easy to offer the kind of product which the customer need and we should engage with the customer always," he insisted.
 
The panel discussion, moderated by Clifford Alveres, Senior Editor, BW Businessworld attended by a large number of delegates from BFSI segment.