siliconindia | | August 20168BATTLE CARDS OUT: IT'S FINTECH VS. FIsBy Ashok Kapoor, VP ­ Marketing, Newgen SoftwareRecently, one of my colleague, while trans-ferring money to his wife's account, en-countered an issue with his banks's online site and the payment failed. Didn't matter. He quickly launched his mobile wallet application (which as per him, he always keeps it loaded for emergency situations like this) and zapped the money to his wife's account. Anything strikes? Yes! The battle is on between our banking and FI giants and the fledglings in the Fintech community. Who would have thought a decade or so back? Being a Software Products enthu-siast, it doesnt come as a surprise to me. However, what does surprise me is the pace at which the fintech startups community is aggressively eating into the market share of the incumbent banks and financial institutions.Why Are Banks Stuck In The Downcard Syndrome?Banks have always been seen as a dependable institution when it comes to handling public and corporate finances. However, it took one mortgage bubble burst to jolt everyone into reality that something might be amiss, somewhere. Banks were a pioneer upto some point of time when it comes to technology adoption. Computerization of bank branches and automation of banking processes with niche packaged apps became the norm. Internet banking, ATMs, mobile banking, telebanking, online money transfer through NEFT/RTGS are all pioneering technology that banks have offered to the public. However, with time, banks overlooked certain aspects in technology adoption and fell behind in the race for customer acquisition.As I narrated above, my dear colleague did not deliberate upon payment failure whether to reattampt the transaction later at the bank's website. He simple opted for his mobile wallet that IN MY OPINIONHeadquartered in Washington, Newgen Software is a global leader in offering Business Process Management (BPM), Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Customer Communication Management (CCM) and Case Management solutions to leading banks, BPOs, insurance firms and healthcare institutions.Ashok Kapooraddressed his need for quick transaction. It is the customer experience part that banks are losing out on. The reason? Customer Loyalty has become a mirage. In this era of instant gratification, customers flock to whoever is offering them the quickest service for their bucks. While banks were busy getting their data strategy right, they somehow missed the transformation in customer expecations. They kept investing to keep their core functioning robust with off-the-shelf packaged apps for handling different processes efficiently. However, with time, banks found themselves in a sea of diverse applications with minimal data exchange between them. The RBS saga that led to 600,000 payment delays in 2015 and the IT system meltdown in 2012 which affected 6.5 million customers in UK brought to the fore the underlying pressure build-up in banks due to ageing technology. Fintechs-More Than Wild Card EntrantsThe Reserve Bank of India has recently confirmed that over 24.51 million credit cards and 661.8 million debit cards are in operation. While, the number of transactions on credit cards grew by 27 percent and 48 percent for debit cards for the year ending March 2016, surprisingly, the winner
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