Mobile banking will soon be Axis Bank's primary digital channel
Axis Bank's President and CIO, Amit Sethi, has said that he expects mobile banking to soon become the bank's primary digital channel, overtaking the Internet. Sethi describes that while most countries underwent an Internet revolution, where customers began to bank through the Internet in large numbers, this never occurred in India, due to a lack of infrastructure. Therefore, India's banking population is moving straight from using in-branch services to mobile banking services. Axis Bank has experienced 250%-300% growth in mobile banking, with 88%-90% of transactions happening electronically, and only 11% in branches.

India’s third largest private sector bank Axis Bank is increasingly focusing on mobility, and expects mobile banking to become its primary digital channel soon.

“Most of the countries have gone through two phases of digital revolution -- one was the Internet and second is the mobile. Because of lack of infrastructure, India sort of missed the Internet revolution, but in terms of mobility, huge adoption across the country can be seen. So we, as a country, actually from the Internet generation directly moved to the mobile generation. With the mobile population increasing at such a fast pace, we see huge demand from our customers to use banking on the mobile,” Amit Sethi, President and CIO, Axis Bank, tells Firstpost.

“The company is witnessing 250-300 percent growth in mobile banking. A major chunk of our transactions is moving to the digital channels, especially on the mobile front. Today, 88-90 percent of transactions at Axis Bank are actually happening electronically; and only 11 percent are happening in the branches. It is a huge switch,” he notes.

So, with digital transactions increasing and decreasing footfalls in the branches, can we expect branches to be obsolete? Sethi clarifies that it doesn't mean the end of branches but their inherent function is changing. "Branches are becoming a major channel for advising customers, helping them manage their finances better, and more. Today, branches have become more of customer-centric rather than a transaction focused place. We do not see branch banking going anywhere, in fact we are opening more branches every year,” Sethi elaborates.

Talking about the investments in new technologies, he asserts, “We are big believers in ROI-based investment. We want to be technology leaders in the banking sector. So, all investments are made with that particular focus. We see SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) very relevant for banks. We are building solutions to remain socially relevant for our customers and analytics is a key portion of everything that we do today both in terms of what we give as an offering to the customer as well as to sharpen our back-end. We are using analytics to sharpen our fraud system, risk management system, our decision making ability, our product offerings, and our operational capabilities.”

Additionally, the company is focused on security. There are multiple levels of security that we give on handsets as well as through the application. As a backup, we use numerous tools which we call adaptive authentication tools to check in on fraud. We keep on enhancing our security offerings while we offer our customers the digital property, Sethi says.

Talking about the competition, he signs off saying, “Axis Bank is way ahead of the competition in the digital space.”