YES Bank has established itself as an early adopter of technology in the service of its customers. Ritesh Pai, Chief Digital Officer, YES Bank, outlines the bank’s digital strategy and the overall philosophy directing the Bank’s digital initiatives. Excerpts:.

How would you characterise YES Bank’s digital strategy today, given that it has been at the forefront of adopting technology?

Since its inception, YES Bank has leveraged technology and innovation as mission-critical pillars, pioneering implementation of several technology initiatives in corporate and retail banking services such as Blockchain, Banking from ERP, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning-backed solutions, among others. To enhance banking solutions for customers, we have embraced the fact that robotics, intelligent workflow and API will play an important role in transaction processing and services-related activities in financial services. We have continued to emphasise the development of innovative technologies to facilitate our business use cases, new digital models, non-traditional alliances and fintech capabilities in order to make banking simple and customer-centric.

Which was the first big digital initiative taken by YES Bank and how was the response?

YES Bank is known for many ‘industry first’ initiatives. We were the first bank to introduce voice-based IVR solutions, a comprehensive personal finance management tool, dynamic password for online transactions, single PIN across all products, mobile money wallet and so on, much ahead of their time in the India.

Our first big digital offering was YES Money, a pioneer offering which is also a classic case study of frugal innovation, where we have taken technology to the last mile and enabled domestic remittance at the doorstep. We partnered with multiple entities to sign up various mom-and-pop stores and provided them with a platform to enable cash-to-bank transfers to the migrant population working in urban centres. Today, we offer YES Money services at more than 100,000 stores.

Service delivery has become instant, and personalisation is the key, across the industry. As such, with the rapid adoption of mobile technology and the rise in online conversations and transactions, it was natural for a technology-pro bank like YES Bank to make it easy for customers to interact on platforms they are most acquainted and comfortable with. AI-powered bots and RPA-led technology available across the Bank’s touchpoints have transformed the way customers interact with the Bank. The adoption rate and feedback from early adopters of all three of our chatbots — YES ROBOT, YES mPower and YES TAG — has been tremendous.

What are your key focus areas right now?

With the adoption of the Alliance Relationships through Technology (ART) model, we have managed to achieve exponential impact; our partnership with Freecharge led to the creation of the world’s largest virtual prepaid program by Mastercard, with over 4 million cards and PhonePe UPI integration powered by YES Bank. This is among the most popular payment apps in the country and contributes to more than 75 per cent of UPI merchant transactions. Also, we were the first bank in India to offer API banking service.

We are currently working on integrating future technologies like Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence into our RPA solution stack to automate more complex processes, including ones which need smart and quick decision-making and building Intelligent RPA. This mutation will deliver exponential value proposition to the industry’s operations and, more specifically, retail operations.

How have these initiatives shaped the personal banking landscape?

We realise that technology is going to play a key role in redefining the banking sector. As such, our investment in new core banking, mobility platforms, enterprise message broker, CRM, Machine Learning, Robotics, Analytics Platforms, AI and Chatbot Framework, new-age card management platforms and transaction switch have helped in creating what we call a ‘core stack’. Additionally, YES Bank’s BHIM YES PAY is the first wallet to fully integrate the India Stack APIs.

These initiatives will ensure that we are well placed to design and deliver personal banking on digital platforms in accordance with the changing demands of the customer. We have also created an open API architecture which enables us to empower corporate and e-commerce clients with banking and payment services. We offer API Banking to more than 250 clients.

Blockchain and AI are seen dominating the banking space, but there are also fears of job losses. How do you see this technology?

Several trends are shaping banking in India, including the changing needs of customers, rapid expansion of the telecom network, pro-digital regulatory changes, widespread innovation led by fintech, strong macroeconomic fundamentals and an overarching digital revolution in the country.

We continue to believe that we are moving into a digital world of banking. There is more to come in the connected world for banking to offer — especially fast-growing newer technologies like blockchain/AI-led dominated digital world.

I feel technology will create more jobs rather than eliminate them. We have seen this for at least two centuries, starting with the Industrial Revolution in Britain to the current Information Age. But in every instance, technological shift has created separate lines of work that have not only been compensatory, but also revolutionary.

For instance, the advent of computers led to the demise of typewriters. However, this also resulted in the emergence of software programming and development as a line of work, and most importantly, introduced the world to the digital age. AI is unlikely to replace jobs that require human-to-human interaction.

As a bank, we focus on future-ready concepts and strategies. We are also working with skill development companies to scale this requirement; this transformation is more of a journey rather than a switch ‘on/off’ scenario.

comment COMMENT NOW