03 July, 2020: By Ajoy Maitra
Changing Technology modifying the outlook of the world into Digitilisation and adoption of online solutions to every issues, with every advancing years, we experience the viability of ease-at-home in various sectors. Traditional Banking system remaining within the core of the change, digitalisation takes an optimistic view of the future. At the outset, banks and financial institutions adopted technology as a means to stay connected to customers, deliver services and perhaps make money. Essentially, online or web banking offers customers almost every service traditionally available through a local branch including deposits, transfers, and online bill payments through desktop, laptop or mobile phones. At the core, online banking permits users to avail services in just a few clicks!

There are several advantages of online banking such as 24/7 access to their bank accounts from world-over, fast and easy fund transfer, coupled with highly safe and secure transactions of low to high value. The latest trend in Internet banking is to integrate third parties into the electronic business. Typically, customers use banks to interact with a third party, for example to pay their bills. In this case, the Internet channel can also be used to do the complete transaction electronically, resulting in impressive cost and time saving, not only for the bank and its customer, but also for the other involved parties. Personalisation remains to be of utmost importance as the customers are more attracted towards ease of doing thing and how fast it takes effect.
The first step would be to identify what personalization is and what it is not. Thereafter, banks and financial institutions can leverage on the large repository of customer data, customer touch-points and digital platforms to deliver meaningful and powerful personalized experiences. To be sure, personalization in banking is not primarily about selling. It's about providing service, information, and advice, often on a daily basis or even several times a day. Such interactions, as opposed to infrequent sales communications, form the crux of the customer's banking experience. Yet many banks still tend to focus their personalization efforts on the sales arena.

Before Coronavirus, the 2020s were already being framed as the decade for digital bank transformation. Such changes reflected a mounting hunger for must-have innovations including seamless, hyper-personalised user experiences. COVID-19 is accelerating these demands. It's even changing consumers' behaviours, pushing them to consider new tools and technologies. A March 2020 survey by Lightico found that 82% of customers were concerned about visiting their branch in person and that 63% of those polled were now more willing to try digital applications. These shifts will be long-lasting.
India, as per a report by Capgemini Research Institute. Indians are increasingly adopting digital payment methods, even those in the older age groups, according to the report. India is currently at the top in usage of digital payments and will be seen in the next six months, said the report. Almost 80% of the older consumers in the country in the age group of 56-60 years will show the highest usage of digital payment channels in the next six months. This was followed by the age group of 36-45 years at 83%. The global average for increase in digital payment channels in the next six months in both the age groups is less than 50%.


Be it through mobile banking or digital modes of payment, digital technologies are gradually transforming the banking and financial services industry (BFSI) in India and across the globe. A market report by KPMG concluded that the overall value of digital payments is set to grow at a CAGR of 12.7% over 2016-2019.
Let's take a quick look into the transformaing Technologies that would revolutionize the Banking Sector:
Artificial Intelligence Banks can use AI to transform the customer experience by providing smooth and fast services, however, it is not limited to retail banking services. The investment banking services as well as other financial services provided by the banks are integrated through Artificial Intelligence for Real-Time processing of data.

Artificial Intelligence Going by the 2018 Accenture report on banking technology, 83% of bankers in India believe that AI technology will work along with human agents soon. AI-driven chatbots are now trained to converse like humans and respond intelligently to customer queries. Even your banking customers today prefer to talk to a chatbot and answer common queries before speaking to your sales or customer service agent!

Blockchain While AI technologies have been prevalent for some decades now, Blockchain has emerged as an exciting digital technology in recent years and is poised to change the way you do digital banking in a significant manner. With blockchain-based banking, your bank can now process payments faster and accurately using distributed ledgers. The use of blockchain in digital banking can reduce your transactional costs and also lead to the development of new banking products and services that can generate new lines of revenue.

Cloud technology With the increasing volume of customer data, banks are keen to boost their digital capabilities in handling this data along with enhanced security and agility. This is where cloud-based technologies and platforms are set to make a major difference. It minimises the physical usage of documents, reducing the hassle of management & security. Banking regulators are growing comfortable with cloud implementations and even requiring multi-cloud in some cases, so if one cloud provider fails the other can take over.

Mobile banking It is now a common facility promoted by banks to ease out the basic banking services of Balance check. According to an AT Kearney survey, 85% of banking executives believe that mobile technology will eventually replace computers as the preferred touchpoint for customers. Apart from the increased use of mobile wallets for digital payments, we are witnessing technology trends such as mobile biometrics, P2P payments, and voice-based searches.

Robotic Process Automation Using Robotic Process Automation, banks and financial institutions can create pre-programmed processes that can self-learn from existing data patterns and business decisions. This can reduce your overall administrative costs by 50% while improving the quality and speed of your banking process. For the banking industry, RPA can also simplify compliances by automatically generating auditor reports and maintaining details of automated processes.


Thus, benefits of technological advancements in the banking sector increases operational efficiency of banks, reducing operational costs and attracts more young customers, thereby supplementing large volumes of data being generated and maintained secured.