Hdfc Digital Initiatives and Products for Digital Banking

It is very important for banks to focus on what their customer need and how their interactions with different organisations ae impacting their expectations from the bank. In today’s scenario very high standards are being set by organisation’s and solution providers such as Netflix, iTunes bank need to do everything to catch up with the speed this organisations are adopting to latest technologies and making different offers.

The Gen Y customer segment of 75 million, i.e. individuals born between 1982 and 1995 have different characteristics as compared to other customers. The expectation among customer is rising as they want to experience a seamless experience through Omni channel, anywhere and anytime banking facilities. They want an integrated online, mobile and in person services.

The two-three most promising areas where digital advances could revolutionise the customer experience are artificial intelligence, chatbots and personalization. Internet of Things is another area where some form of banking transactions could take place. Connected devices, equipped with biometric capabilities, could help enable transaction banking. Service offerings that combine these technologies could make banking very different from what it is today. For instance, you have a device say your smart phone from where AI gathers information of your spending habits or preferences or location, makes sense of the information and drives banking decisions. Another example where, in a pilot project, a customer's phone location using triangulation with the location of the ATM where his debit card is being used for a transaction. If the customer's phone was found far away from the ATM, the system would decline the transaction, with the assumption being that the customer normally carries his/her mobile phone to the ATM. Such hyper-localization can be tested in several areas: security, transactions, marketing. To take another case where a customer has browsed through a website/app for booking a movie ticket, and then proceeded to go to the mall where the cinema was located. If the customer has reached early, the system knows the customer has free time. The cinema may have a tie-up with its neighbouring coffee shop and sends him a message with a customized offer to spend time there! A number of technologies would have come together to make this possible.

On basis of technology consenting, the customer classifications have been done in following three categories and their characteristics are:

1.Digital Natives

Vast knowledge and heavy use of Social Media, mobile web and new technologies.

Financially relatively weak today

2.Digital Migrants

Fast adapters to new technology to leverage the advantages for daily life

Hesitant at digital advice but willing to try

Financially relatively strong today

3.Digital Deniers

Mostly elderly, technology averse people

Seeking financial advice from experts in face-to-face meetings

Financially relatively strong today

Until a half century banks have conducted business on the basis of physical distribution networks. The model has been challenged to progress towards electronic distribution. Banks have finally reached a stage where electronic distribution has matured and has proven it works, but this is enough for past. But to stay relevant in 21st century, it is time for the banks to enhance on these electronic platforms and take them to next level.

In the long term, technology resistant groups will disappear and hence bank should care about technology hooked customers.

Without ease of use, intuitiveness and relevance, no digital initiative can be a success with customers.

This is a testimony to the success of HDFC Bank’s digital products with customers. Aiming to be “a completely customer-centric organization, the bank has been gearing itself up digitally for the past few years. Today, digital products have cemented themselves as customer’s choice of channel.

Demonetisation was a temporary setback for a business whose customers traditionally transact in cash. Your Bank was able to overcome this in the last quarter. Demonetisation and the advent of the next-generation of entrepreneurs has seen a steady shift towards digital transactions. The Bank launched a complete online solution-the ‘SM@Bank’. Through this, customers can access-credit facility information, request adhoc/temporary overdraft facilities, ask for new facilities and submit documents to the Bank for straight through processing on a 24*7 basis. This gained significant traction in the very first year and is now poised to gain further momentum. Within this segment, the Bank continued its approach of targeting the manufacturing, retailing, wholesale, trading, and services sectors.

HDFC bank has undertaken several initiatives to change the way the relationship works between the bank and customers. They have undertaken steps on lending, payments, transactions, communication, and data analyses as well as in-house, in terms of training employees to understand how banking works in the digital world. All of these offerings are meant to ease the way the customer interacts with the bank. They have been closely monitoring trends that have emerged in the fintech (financial technologies) and start-up space to keep looking for ideas how they can improve their offerings. They are working with a lot of fintech start-ups to bring in solutions that they can offer to customers. The impact of these initiatives is showing. Ten years ago, the share of Internet and mobile banking transactions [as a percentage of total transactions] stood at 13 percent. In FY13, it stood at 44 percent, in FY14, it was 55 percent. In FY15, the number was at 63 percent. Last fiscal, it has gone up to 71 percent. The share of branch transactions today has gone down to 11 percent. Last year, they launched the 10-second personal loan where pre-approved customers get funds credited into the bank accounts within 10 seconds of filling up their applications digitally. That was setting a benchmark of digital. They also introduced a recharge-on-missed-call feature that allows our customers to recharge their prepaid mobile phones in one go.

Mr. Puri’s vision and strategy have been the driving force behind the Bank’s foray into the world of “Digital Banking resulting in the roll out of several digital banking products like EVA Webchat Bot, UPI, 10 - second loans, PayZapp, Chillr, etc. Bank has embarked on a ‘Mobile First’ digital strategy that builds on the last two decades of investment in technology. This strategy enables your Bank to offer an entire spectrum of banking products which can now be accessed not only on high-end smart phones and tablets, but also on feature phones that require little or no Internet connectivity. Digital innovation has been the prime driver across businesses for the last two years. It has got further impetus with emphasis on artificial intelligence, chatbots and machine learning enabling your Bank to offer a superior customer experience.

Some of the major digital innovations introduced in the year ended March 31, 2017 are:

1.Interactive Humanoid IRA 2.0: HDFC Bank is a pioneer in self-service channels. Earlier this year, we became the first bank in India to introduce a humanoid robot. At the welcome desk of one of our prominent branches, an Intelligent Robotic Assistant (or IRA) greets customers, displays a list of available services, and accompanies them to the relevant counter.

HDFC Bank now has a humanoid, IRA, which is a technology demonstrator in the field of artificial intelligence and robotics. It can support customer service. HDFC Bank launched IRA 2.0, its interactive humanoid at the Koramangala Branch in Bangalore in April 2018. The interactive humanoid in its advance version is aimed to enhance user experience for customers visiting in this branch and will interact with them, answer bank-related queries, frequently asked questions (FAQs), and also guide them inside the branch with voice-based navigation. The in-built GPS enabled indoor humanoid has a speech recognition module that can be trained to understand what customers speak and uses ultrasonic sensor to move in inside the branch as well as a face detection algorithm for recognition the customers. However, the face recognition feature will be enabled later.

2.Virtual Assistant EVA on Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant: Electronic Virtual Assistant is a one-of-its-kind model that leverages the astounding power Of Al. Assimilating knowledge from a plethora of sources. It is India's first and largest Artificial Intelligence powered banking chatbot. Eva was built with the aim to leverage latest technologies to help serve our customers better and faster. Eva uses the latest in AI and Natural Language Processing to understand the user query and fetch the relevant information from thousands of possible sources, all in a matter of 0.4 seconds. People can get the information they are need instant by typing query with Eva in human language instead of searching, browsing, clicking buttons or waiting on a call. It is linked to popular social media channels like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Eva has already answered more than 5 million queries from around a million customer with more than 85% accuracy. Eva holds more than 20,000 everydays conversations with customers from all over the world. Since the launch of Al/ML-based digital commerce within the social media messenger and the bank's website, conversational payments have scaled up tremendously.

3.HDFC Bank OnChat: This product of HDFC since its launch in December 2016 has grown by 160% month on month in transactions. It is linked to popular social media channels like Facebook simplify payments across the board—paying bills, recharging mobile phones, booking cabs and even making reservations for movies and many others. HDFC Bank OnChat has witnessed an exponential growth in the number of users garnering over 2.4 Mn messages. The bot built by Niki.ai, HDFC Bank OnChat, is also India's first bot to be able to send personalised communication like bill payment reminders and notifications to the customers as allowed by Facebook. It soon will be launching facilities like hotel booking and flight booking.

4.PayZaap: HDFC Bank has a mobile payment application called PayZapp, which gives complete payment solution in just One Click. With PayZapp, one can shop on their mobile at partner apps, buy movie tickets, groceries, compare and book flight tickets and hotels, shop online and get great discounts at SmartBuy, send money to anyone in their contact list or to their bank account, pay bills and recharge your mobile, DTH and data card and many more. One can also link their Debit/credit card of any bank to this App and have many offers such as:

• 10% cash back on IRCTC for which HDFC Bank has a tie up.
• 10% cash back on pizza hut and Dominos.
• 10% cash back on Airtel digital TV and Idea
• It also provides with a benefit of offer of the month which can include discount at Book my show or OLA booking etc.

5.Chillr: Chillr is one of the smartphone Application HDFC bank is promoting for digital payments and use. It is India's first multi-bank mobile payment app that links directly to our bank account. It allows us to send money instantly from our HDFC Bank account to anyone in our phone book 24*7 or to a beneficiary using his ˜Account number & IFSC code' or ˜UPI ID. One can also recharge, pay utility bills or request money on Chillr. Sending money to anyone is as easy as sending a text message.

Additional services Chillr provides are listed below:

• Pay Life Insurance premiums
• Split bills between friends.
• Scan QR code and pay to any Chillr user in your vicinity without sharing your mobile number.
• Add people who are not on Chillr using their ‘Account number & IFSC code' or ‘UPI ID’.
• Pay Landline, Electricity and Gas bills and
• Request money from friends or customers.

It also provides a high end security like:

• All transactions authorized through an MPIN issued by HDFC Bank (The MPIN is known only to you)
• No passwords stored in the app
• Custom keyboards for protection from phishing attacks and
• Secured by 2048-bit client certificates.

6.Mobile Banking: Like any other Banks Application, HDFC has its own Mobile Banking App where there are more than 125+ features/transactions on our smart phone. HDFC Bank Mobile Banking App for Android helps the customers to check the account balance, transfer money, recharge, pay bills and much more. Using the My Menu feature the user can create their own personalized menu of 10 favourite transactions. This will help the customer to navigate faster within the app and complete transactions in a smooth and easy manner. One can also locate the nearby HDFC ATMs and Branches just by clicking on locate with the help of GPS. One can also apply for various types of loans like car loan, personal loan, gold loan, two wheeler loan etc. through mobile banking.

7.Phone Banking: Phone Banking is one of the unique feature HDFC Bank Provides to its customer. It offers all the conveniences needed to access our Accounts, Credit Cards, Loans, Demat & Investment Services from the comfort of our door step, office or on the move, all this in any of our preferred language. It is combination of IVR and Agent offering services.

Types of services which are offered by Phone Banking are as follows:

• Report loss of your ATM/ Debit /Credit/ Forex / Prepaid Card.
• Order a Cheque Book / Account Statement.
• Open a Fixed /Recurring Deposit.
• Re-generate ATM / Debit card PIN / Net Banking IPIN.
• Check your account balance and many other.

8.Net Banking: NetBanking is an incredibly convenient and powerful tool, letting us do everything we need with our accounts at the click of a mouse. It is Real Time, giving you up-to-the-second details on your account HDFC Bank offers a comprehensive range of transactions across multiple products through its NetBanking channel. NetBanking conducts over 200+ transactions from the comfort of your home or office.

Some of the transactions you can do through NetBanking are:

• Check your account balances and download 5 year account statement in 5 formats, instantly
• Book Fixed Deposit / Recurring Deposit
• View your Credit Card details and pay your Credit Card Bills
• Request Stop Payment of a Cheque/ Hotlist you Debit Card/ Credit Card
• Register for Third Party Transfer
• Pay your Taxes online
• Update your PAN Details online and lot more.