SBI employees’ body expresses concern over target via digital platform YONO

The All India State Bank of India Employees’ Association (AISBIEA) has expressed concern at the targets given to the branches to extend products and services to customers via the YONO (You Need Only One) digital banking app.

The Association alleged this is pushing the operating staff to get customers to download the app to promote digital banking.

KS Krishna, General Secretary, AISBIEA, in a communication to the Association members, cautioned this could lead to frauds like the one reported recently, whereby a customer, who had taken overdraft against fixed deposit via the app, was shocked to find ₹10 lakh cleaned out from his account through six transactions.

Also read: SBI’s digital banking platform ‘YONO’ encounters technical glitch

“Operating officials are happy in that some paper work is avoided (via the YONO route). But the customer...has to be taught (on how to go about downloading and using the app) by the operating staff.

“The staff will do it for the customer on his/her mobile by sharing of the one time password (OTP) by the customer,” Krishna said.

Cyber attack

He cautioned the members that cyber fraudster are lurking around the corner to dupe customers when sharing of OTP happens.

Drawing attention to another recent incident, whereby the internet banking-connected personal overdraft account of a young bank manager was hacked by fraudsters and he was duped of ₹65,000, Krishna said as per the manager’s assessment food-ordering apps are being tracked and used by fraudsters to leak-out confidential customer information.

As per SBI’s second quarter analyst presentation, YONO notched up about 2.85 crore cumulative registrations in the last four years.

The bank said it has generated a loan portfolio of about ₹25,000 crore and liability portfolio of about ₹60,000 crore through YONO.

SBI is offering interest rate concession to customers applying for loans applied via YONO app.

The Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das, in his keynote address at a webinar organised by National Council of Applied Economic Research recenty, said: “Technology, though being a great enabler, can also lead to exclusion of certain segments of society. It is imperative to build trust in formal financial services among the hitherto excluded population.

“Adequate safeguards need to be reinforced to address issues of cyber security, data confidentiality, mis-selling, customer protection and grievance redress through appropriate financial education and awareness.”