Mobile
banking is an instant hit with our customers,
especially with our NRI clients
P J Jacob Panjikaran
Mobile banking has made life easier for both customers
and their banks
In the 1980s, account holders had to make a weekly
visit to their banks for routine activitiesupdating
the pass book, withdrawing cash for weekly expenses,
verifying weekly credits or debits, or simply to get
a new cheque book. These routine matters took plenty
of time as every bank used to be crowded, especially
on a weekday. This had two implicationsthe customer
wasted precious time, and the bank clerk precious working
hours.
By the mid-nineties, the effect of globalisation and
advances in technology started trickling down to the
banking sector. The entry of foreign banks and the opening
of next-generation banks accelerated the process of
technology upgradation in the sector. Till then, banks
were only talking about customer satisfaction. Increased
competition saw banking players go beyond just satisfying
the customer. Indian banks started looking at options
wherein they could help the customer while at the same
time reduce their service costs. They started looking
seriously at alternative delivery channels such as ATMs,
Internet banking and tele-banking. The latest of these
other channels is mobile phone banking. Apart from these
new channels being very convenient for depositors, banks
found that transaction costs, manpower and the rush
at counters could be reduced by deploying them. They
freed up the staff, who could, in turn, be deployed
for more productive activities and thus contribute to
increasing the overall efficiency of the bank.
SMSing account holders
In recent years, mobile phones have gained acceptance
as the preferred means of communication. It is therefore
natural that banks started thinking about putting this
technology to good use for interacting with and acquiring
customers. They started looking at SMS as a tool for
sending and receiving business messages. If a message
can be generated by the system based on certain preset
conditions, it can be transmitted via the Internet or
converted into an SMS and transmitted to a mobile number.
The option of receiving an alert rests with the customer.
For example, a customer can specify rules or conditions
under which he wants to be informed whenever his account
balance goes below a certain amount. He can also receive
an alert whenever a credit or debit happens in his account,
or whenever a credit or debit for a fixed amountlike
monthly rental or insuranceis debited. The system
automatically sends these alerts to his mobile phone.
To enable this, the banks service provider has
an SMS gateway to other mobile service providers. The
message can be delivered to any mobile phone in any
part of the world. In the same manner, a customer can
make structured queries through his mobile phone regarding
account balance, last few transactions, cheque-clearing
status, etcall through a simple SMS.
Banking at your fingertips
When an enquiry is made for, say, an account balance,
the system fetches data from a primary server and delivers
it to the account holders phone inbox as a short
message. A request for a cheque book gets processed
in the back-office with a receipt number that is sent
to the customer, again as an SMS. For depositors, this
is a value-added service. Banking is at his fingertips.
For the bank, there is considerable reduction in the
number of telephone calls received. Customers need not
worry about bank timings since the database of any bank
that has deployed a core banking solution is up and
running on a 24x7 basis. No human intervention is required
for generating alerts or for replying to queries. Requests
for cheque books can be consolidated into a report that
the banks staff act upon the following day. Even
the timing of messages can be scheduled. The bank can
also send promotional messages, birthday greetings,
festival greetings or any other messages through this
medium. The alerts help prevent frauds as alerts can
be set for any withdrawal above a specified amount.
If you suspect that something is wrong, you can stop
payment.
Innovation is the mantra and banks have to be one
step ahead. Technology-based products can definitely
help win customer confidence and enhance service levels.
In the case of South Indian Bank, we came out with this
product in May 2004. We are presently offering 16 different
types of services through mobile banking. The product
is an instant hit with our customers, especially with
our NRI clients. As an introductory offer we are giving
this service free. We also have ATMs and Internet banking,
but for mobile banking the attraction is that an account
holder does not need to go to an ATM kiosk or to the
nearest Internet caféhe only has to press
a few buttons on his mobile phone to access his account.
The future of mobile banking looks bright. In future,
the customer will be able to book railway tickets and
air tickets, and order various utilities using his mobile
phone, for which the bank will debit his account online.
I would like to close with a word of caution. Banking
is a service industry, so if technology overtakes relationships,
we will start looking at the customer as a pin number
and not as a human being. And when the customer realises
that he is only a pin number, he will look for a bank
that is more humane, and then no technology will be
able to retain him. That is why our motto should be
Blend Tradition With Technology.
* Jacob Panjikaran is assistant general manager at
The South Indian Bank
(expresscomputeronline)
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