The shift from paper-based to digital customer onboarding has altered business-customer interactions. Driven by technological advancements in identity verification, data security and user experience, customers can now complete registration and account opening entirely online. The transformation enhances convenience and efficiency for customers while streamlining operations for businesses, creating a seamless and secure onboarding experience.
Siddharth Agarwal, Founder and Managing Director, Mobicule Technologies said, “In earlier days, if you took a loan, you used to give xeroxes of your PAN card, Aadhaar card. Then you used to self-attest and sign it.”
He highlighted how technology has transformed this process, stating, “What we have now is that you put your thumb and you are digitally onboarded onto a platform.”
Operational Efficiency And Customer Convenience
Nirmal Badale, Senior Vice President, Credit Saison India outlined the key drivers for digital transformation commenting, “From an organisational point of view - one is operational efficiency gives scale; the second, gives me a cost advantage.” He also emphasised the customer perspective noting, “The second dimension is from a customer point of view, why would I do a digital KYC? It's, it's easy and convenient.”
Emphasising the importance of a multi-faceted approach, Chandan Khaitan, CEO of Muthoot FinCorp ONE said, “Whenever we say customer onboarding, we always think of the whole 360 degree of customer onboarding. And that's where we have tried to break this subject into multiple parts of it.”
Data Protection And Risk Management
Addressing the risks associated with digital onboarding, Nalini Venkat, Head of Institutional Business at Digit Insurance stated, “Risk management is very important. And there is no choice today that you have to be digital because the rewards outweigh the risks.”
She highlighted data protection as a key concern and praised regulatory efforts to adapt to the fintech landscape.
Vipul Saini, Assistant Vice President, Startup Product, HDFC Bank discussed the bank's approach to fintech collaboration. He asserted, “We created a dedicated document in terms of how do we collaborate with fintech’s, what is the role that regulation plays into it and how do we have a collaboration where we can fast track that deployment within the banks.”
Sumoth C, Head – Fintech Partnerships, Federal Bank shared their focus on customer-centric digital journeys underscoring, “We ensure that customer experience is seamless.” He highlighted innovative approaches like WhatsApp banking and pre-approved loans delivered in just a few clicks.
Digital Financial Inclusion
Aakarsh Naidu, Head – Fintech and Startups, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Innovation Hub outlined their mandate, “Our broad mandate is frictionless finance for a billion Indians. In order to achieve this, we believe that there are two critical factors. One is the customer at the centre because customer centricity is key in order to achieve digital financial inclusion within a diverse demography.”
Providing insights from a fintech perspective, Souparno Bagchi, COO of Balancehero India concluded, “85 per cent of our customers actually come from tier two and tier two plus, which means not the top eight cities, which also means in terms of pin codes, I'm talking about we provide servicing in 97 per cent of the pin codes in India. We do more than 10,000 disbursements of fresh loans every day.”
The panel discussion took place at the fourth edition of BW Businessworld's Festival of Fintech at Taj MG Road, Bengaluru.
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