‘The pandemic has accelerated the journey to the future!’

Delivering unmatched digital experiences would be the key for BFSI companies in the new post-pandemic business environment, agreed CXOs from BFSI companies, taking part in an online video panel discussion organized by CIO&Leader, in association with Adobe.

The panel discussion themed Future of Digital Experiences in BFSI  was organized on 17^th June 2020 and saw participation of heads of IT, digital and marketing as panellists. Moderated by Vikas Gupta, Co-founder and Director, 9.9 Group, the participants were Molly Kapoor, Head of Marketing, Birla Sun Life Mutual Funds; Nirita Bose, Senior Vice President & Head - IT, Axis Asset Management Co; Deepak Sharma, President & CDO, Kotak Mahindra Bank; Srinivas Jain, Executive Director & CMO, SBI Mutual Funds; Girish Budhiraja, Chief Product & Marketing Officer, SBI Card; and Vyshak V, Head - Solution Consulting, Adobe.

About 35 exclusive by-invitation-only audience consisting of executives from marketing, IT and digital business units of banks, insurance firms and other financial services industries too attended the digital event. 

‘Our customers overnight have become digital customers in the wake of COVID-19,’ said Molly Kapoor, Head of Marketing, Birla Sun Life Mutual Funds.

“The forced digital move due to COVID-19 improved our digital journey and so this New Normal has been a ‘silver lining in the cloud’ for us,” commented Nirita Bose, Senior Vice President & Head - IT, Axis Asset Management Co.

“Personalizing and prioritizing customer needs was essential for us and so we used human-like bots. So, trust, touch and technology are key,” said Deepak Sharma, President & CDO, Kotak Mahindra Bank.

“More than half of our transactions have now gone digital. Also, we started consumer behavior analytics, for example what customers are buying, how they are using the brand, etc.” commented Girish Budhiraja, Chief Product & Marketing Officer, SBI Card.

“We got our partner continuity in place. For instance, we got plenty of partners to do very good service and one case is that of helping us with KYC. So, building partner confidence was important,” said Srinivas Jain, Executive Director & CMO, SBI Mutual Funds.

“Customer data is important as is agility. We have to re-examine all strategies, interventions and the roadmap as the BFSI sector adopts the New Normal,” commented Vyshak V, Head - Solution Consulting, Adobe.

Finally, there was an insightful presentation by Kaveri Misra, Principal, Digital Strategy Group, Adobe on “Future of Customer Experience Management in Financial Services,” which highlighted the emerging trends and what Adobe is doing in this regard.

CIO&Leader also conducted a big idea contest among the delegates, who were asked to articulate their big digital customer experience idea that can make significant impact in their business. Sumoth C, Deputy Vice President & Head - Cards & Payments, Federal Bank; Sandesh Govalkar, Vice President & Head - Technology, Edelweiss REAP and Satish Warrier, CISO, Stock Holding Corporation of India Limited, won the competition.