Yes Bank COO shares the bank’s digital strategy - ET CIO (2024)

• Strategy and Management
• 3 min read

Customer experience, in its totality, has come to assume a central place in digital banking and Yes Bank fully recognizes this.

In the latter half of FY21, the bank refurbished its online banking portals for both retail and corporate customers, refining the interface and redefining their experience – this was a process that required a full infrastructure stack upgrade.

A framework has also been created not only to provide a variety of integration kits for fintech but also to contextualize banking, especially payments by inserting them seamlessly into the digital interactions.

“This helps service customer needs in a harmonious, non-intrusive way. With this approach, we have come a long way in servicing a significant proportion of the digital payments market”, said Anita Pai, COO, Yes Bank.

With the growing volume of digital transactions, Yes Bank feels it is indispensable to invest in the right technology tools to enhance not just the customer interface but the whole nine yards around customer transaction, reconciliation and dispute management.

“The objective is to have less manual intervention and to intensify customer delight. The bank will be making necessary investments in these areas over the next few quarters”, she added.

In the last 18 months, Yes Bank has seen a surge in digital payments, especially with e-commerce, as well as in the adoption of QR code-based UPI transactions. “Digitization of toll & transit transactions and e-payment of utility bills are among other noteworthy developments that have picked up significantly over the last year and a half”.

Aligning with the new normal

The bank believes in using technology as a competitive advantage and espouses its adoption. The core tech philosophy is to create a secure, scalable and sustainable platform, which enables the Bank to introduce new and innovative products through which to serve the customer better and fine-tune our delivery mechanisms.

“The organizational mandate is to keep scanning the horizon of digital evolution and fortify the bank with the necessary infrastructure or frameworks, so we can continue to serve customers efficiently and smoothly even with rapidly changing customer consumption patterns”, Pai said.

Yes Bank also constantly examines the latent needs being addressed by fintech companies, especially in the wake of the new normal ushered in by COVID-19.

“And we make sure the company doesn’t miss out on any opportunity to forge valuable partnerships and leverage emerging technologies that have the potential to enrich customer journeys and make them more convenient”, she added.

The banking company manages its technology spends with acute awareness of emerging tech trends, consumer preferences, short-term priorities as well as the medium- and long-term vision of the organization. It will continue to lay more emphasis on

• Cloud technologies: to ensure need-based dynamic infra allocation as per volumes

• Artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML): to facilitate seamless number crunching on a large scale, decipher patterns or detect frauds. Tools like natural language processing (NLP) and AI to make user interactions seamless.

• Cybersecurity: to enable the growing adoption of digital banking and finance by safeguarding transactions

Cloud adoption

The lender has a nuanced strategy for cloud adoption which involves differentiating applications that can use core benefits of the cloud such as auto-scaling, or where the cloud partners are able to clearly deliver a key technology proposition at comparative or better performance levels at a better price.

“As part of this process, we periodically assess our applications portfolio to review what value-add a cloud partner can bring, in terms of built-in services or features. Every effort is made to modernize the stack and ensure the newest technology is brought to use”, Pai maintained.

According to Pai, a number of initiatives are being attempted in collaboration with various fintech and techfin companies that are equipped to conduct their business on the cloud. With several small but agile implementations through such partnerships, Yes Bank is co-creating digital platforms using cloud native architecture and infrastructure.

Join the community of 2M+ industry professionals

Subscribe to our newsletter to get latest insights & analysis.

Download ETCIO App

• Get Realtime updates
• Save your favourite articles

Scan to download App