Blockchain driven project will not be easy to identify: HDFC Bank’s Sharad Bishnoi
“Digital transformation is the millennia” Sharad Bishnoi Senior Vice President & Head of Business Technology Group (Wholesale) at HDFC Bank says.
Sharad Bishnoi being in banking sector for over 30 years, has witnessed the entire transition happening— such as advent of computers coming to the banks. “But the transformation I have seen in last five years, I have not seen in my previous 25 years. Customer preferences are dynamic in nature, which is challenging for banks to keep a pace with the customer expectation. Hence, we listen to the youngest customer first” Bishnoi embarked.
In an interview with ETCIO.COM, Sharad Bishnoi discusses about how Artificial Intelligence extend their services and capabilities to the customers. Further he talks on blockchain technology, which according to him will not be easy to identify for banks.
Q. What are the recent IT projects that you are driving at HDFC Bank?
We are immensely focusing on the retail area, both asset and liability side, customer empowerment where we are able to provide new features and products at different channels. On payments we have been very firm— all the IMPS and UPI are already integrated. Our focus is to ensure the availability of all the features to the customer’s touch point.
On our corporate net banking platform, the trade finance products have really created the buzz. We have also rolled out mobile banking platform for corporate customers. Internal projects, the core banking migration is taking place, we are upgrading our treasury system.
HDFC Bank is also leveraging Artificial Intelligence in the background for customer profiling — identifying the customer’s requirements, his touch point and potential areas where we can engage with the customer.
Q. How HDFC Bank is leveraging Artificial Intelligence and enhancing the customer experience?
AI brings opportunities for internal and external customers both, so as a bank we are running projects in retail and non-retail segment. Also leveraging AI as trade financing technology and products, where customer is uploading documents— which can be read and repository can be created for all the templates that customer has used in the past.
So Artificial Intelligence not only provides an environment which automates the internal process but also extend these services and capabilities to the customers.
Q. How are you using Chatbot as the technology?
Hdfc Bank has recently launched an interactive humanoid, IRA. Our Chatbot is far more superior— where the customer is only asked to mention the credit card number and rest of the process is taken care by the robots.
Q. How are you exploring Blockchain technology?
Cloud, Digital and now Blockchain are those three words that is really eliciting the interest from the banking community.
According to my personal view, blockchain driven project will not be easy to identify for multiple reasons. Because, why should I replace the existing application unless there is a driver; the driver could be efficiency, scalability or the cost saving.
But banks will letch on blockchain projects which will be under regulators, if NPCI does something on the payment system. Because there will be body which is running a project on blockchain.
Q. How digital transformation is tracking down the business pain point?
There were times when account opening or loan would take multiple days, and HDFC Bank is present in more than 2000 locations. And the movement of the document was costlier and inefficient process. Hence we digitized and digitalized every process.
We have launched 10 seconds loan for existing customer, last year. On a click, the loan amount is transferred in the account, in less than 10 seconds, through net banking. Again this is AI driven, we are aware about our customer base, their profiling, behavior and requirements.
It is the combination of the agility in terms of rolling out, backend AI and data points.
Across the spectrum of the bank, we are using digital technologies to connect with the customer including the rural market.
[“source-ndtv”]