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Trust and Transparency in Banking – Part 2

2020-06-22T11:14:00.000+10:00

Trust on a brand is built over years. However, it is lost with one poor customer experience and with continuous such poor experiences, the news spreads far and wide, leading to devastating effects. For many financial institutions, such loss in trust by the customers has led to them not only being charged millions of dollars in fines, but also, millions in remediation, and worst of them all, public censure, and reputation loss!

Since 1999, Harris Poll has been quantifying the public reputation of organisations in the US, across the industries, and have found that 80% of the respondents to their survey, have always rated “lying or misrepresenting facts about a product or service”, as the top reason affecting reputation. In the latest findings, there is only 4 financial services organisations in the US in the top 50 – most favourable of them is perched at 13, others are at 17, 45 and 47. Other top reasons for the fall of reputation and trust in a financial institution are “lack of fee transparency”, “providing biased advice for my needs”, “misusing my data”.

A survey by Ernst & Young, suggests that the rise of self-financial management tools propagated digitally and the rise of non-banks and neo banks, has also contributed to lack of trust in the traditional financial institutions. With the increasing dependence and ease of use of digital solutions, the trust in technology is increasing, leading to increasing trust in the non-banks and neo banks, as they fundamentally ride on technology to reach the customers and provide them solutions.

Research firm Forrester highlights the relationship among trust, advocacy, loyalty and future purchase intent in financial services. The research says, “Customer advocacy — the extent to which a firm’s customers believe it does what’s best for them, not just what’s best for its own bottom line (in other words, TRUST) — is a top predictor of customer retention and growth. US financial services customers who rate their firms highest on customer advocacy are most likely to consider those firms for future purchases.”

The bottom line is that like any other relationship, customers base trust as the cornerstone of their relationship with their financial institution. Let’s look at how banks can potentially embrace trust as the fulcrum of all their policy making and decisioning.

To drive trust as the pivot for all organisation decisions, processes, customer centricity must be the centre stage conversation. It is a cultural decision that the board and the management have to drive at all levels, with the right incentives all throughout the organisation. The most consequential way to trust building is by motivating and rewarding the right behaviour. Right from the front-end staff to the CEO to the Board, has to find and do the right thing for their customers. The senior management must become the ambassadors of customer centricity, and trust and that must drive all decision making. With the focus on earning customer’s trust, by building a culture of customer centricity, one of the largest banks in Australia, recently announced an investment of $50 million towards a coaching, education and accreditation program for each one of the 34,000 of the bank staff. While announcing the program, the CEO of the bank remarked that their customers expect their bank to know them and get behind them with products and services to help them prosper. As a bank, they will meet those needs by doing the right thing for their customers and getting the basics right – every time.

For a financial institution, delivering complete transparency in product and service features and fees is a key driver towards building trust with customers. Research has proven positive correlation between fee transparency and customer advocacy. If customers don’t find their financial institution to be transparent on its fees, they are less likely to recommend them to others, making banks lose opportunities to cross/up sell and future business. Driving complete transparency on fees and product and service features is a prerequisite for banks to own the role of a trusted advisor. A centralised product catalogue and a centralised pricing engine sitting on top of all the product systems, that drives product orchestration at the channels and automates the pricing process for the financial institutions can go a long way in enabling product features and fees transparency.

Having a streamlined and seamless approach to customer touch points is crucial to drive customer experience and build trust. Such infrastructure is key to enabling improvements in efficiency, accuracy, and service. Imagine a customer starting a loan application on the digital channel, however, must visit the branch to finish the application with assistance. Moreover, as the branch and the digital channels are disjointed, the customer must restart the application, with some data/information loss through the movement across the channels. Or a customer sees a special offer on internet banking channel, however, he does not see that offer on the mobile app. Such poor experiences can be rooted out by a centralised platform that enables data and information flow between the channels. To drive operational excellence, back end systems must be integrated with the touch points to enable easy orchestration of product and service information and fees. Such ease with operations will propel transparency across the processes, enhanced self-servicing and even empower the financial institution staff to direct the customer to right choices.

Privacy and protection of customer data is another key factor in enhancing trust. With the widespread use of digital, data assumes tremendous significance. Thus, its misuse grows. And with this the need for data protection against cybercrimes, fraud, misconduct, etc, swells significantly. Financial Institutions need to have the right mechanisms to not only protect customer data and keep it private and confidential, but also protect against, say credit card fraud, payment fraud, or similar crimes. With the increasing demand for Open Banking requirements/commitments across the globe, managing and protecting the customer data will be even more critical. Clear responsibility of holding and managing such data is going to be paramount. It is not only about having the necessary infrastructure and process in place, but also about a proactive process and a customer centric approach. The staff needs to be regularly sensitised against such misconduct and misuse of data. The country and regional privacy laws – the likes of GDPR in the EU, The Privacy Act 1988 in Australia, The Data Protection Act 2018 in the UK and similar, need to be operationalised with regular checks and monitoring in place. Financial Institutions should look at building additional controls into the products and services that restricts misuse of any customer data.

For a typical financial institution working as different sub-businesses within the single institution, having a “single source of truth” for product and services or fees, or even customer data, can be a pipe dream. However, there are institutions, who have achieved this with varying degrees of success, and continuing the path. Unless the front-line staff or the customer service representative does not have the holistic picture of the customer, it is always going to be different for him to serve the customer appropriately and “do the right thing.” And if one asks the customer to wait and come back a few days later, the battle is already lost. This is where integrating data across silos and empowering staff to deliver the right product or service, is going to enhance the customer experience and trust.

With the growing use of digitalisation, and the experiences from the other industries, customers expect the similar superior experiences from their financial institutions. Fallout from the current Covid-19 situation and ensuing spurt in use of everything digital, the trust in tech and digital is growing at a pace like never before. This will put financial institutions at the crossroads, where they not only have to shore up their balance sheet in this uncertain environment, but also invest in ways to grow their customer’s trust in them.

Trust and Transparency in Banking – Part 1

2020-06-16T18:13:00.002+10:00

“I explained I’m a gambler...they can clearly see that I’ve got a gambling problem because of the transactions I’ve been making, and I don’t understand why they keep offering me more money.”

- a witness in the Royal Commission into Misconduct in Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry (in Australia)

For last few years, Australian Banking has been rocked by the Royal Commission’s investigation into misconduct in the financial services industry. During the hearings, various institutions have acknowledged varying amounts of negligence or misconduct in their customer dealings. In the last year’s report, all the banks and financial services institutions were reprimanded and fined to varying tunes by the Royal Commission. The remediation processes and risk management processes arising from these findings are still keeping these organisations busy, with each year multi-millions kept aside to remediate affected customers and arrest the brand erosion somewhat.

Similar enquiries into misconduct have happened in the UK as well in recent years. And the UK FCA has institutionalised a conduct risk framework. All major banks in the UK were fined in recent years for either not proper giving commensurate advice, lack of fee / charge transparency, or mis-selling. Each of these financial institutions had to go through multi-million pound of redressal changes and some had to face the dreaded public censure.

Similar problems of conduct risk have been seen in other parts of the globe. With the rise in digital transactions, multiple party involvement in a transaction like payment; financial crime, conduct risk has grown multi fold across the banks. Other examples of conduct risk in a bank could be as simple as misinforming about products/fees, charging fees for no service, serving wrong product/service, administration errors pertaining to customer data, improper advice not commensurate with the customer’s situation, charging incorrect fee or interest, improper complaints handling, and many more. All of these have been found to be areas of misconduct in the Australian Royal Commission assessment (referred above), and the FCA assessment paper in the UK. In fact, the last Banking Standards Board (BSB) report on the culture in the UK Financial Institutions, highlights small but significant declines in the areas of conduct risk, which arise mainly due to lack of transparency and controls in the systems and processes. In the long run, slowly this leads to erosion of trust with the banking industry at large.

Trust is essential to relationships in all facets of life – personal, professional, financial. We have long expected financial institutions to do the right thing for their customers. Banks consider trust a strategic imperative for them, as it is a key indicator of advocacy and future business. And if it is eroded, the impact can be devastating. But trust is often found wanting in today’s world, as can be seen from the conduct risk lens described above. As the consumer trust in the fintech and big tech grows, and as these tech companies spread their wings far and wide into world of financial services, it will be a even more important for the financial institutions to be more trust worthy, to not only shore up future business, but to protect the existing business as well.

Studies have found that the lack of transparency and controls in the systems and processes can be found in anywhere in the bank – right from product design to approval to sales process, post sales servicing, to all-encompassing culture and governance at the bank. The lack of controls or the lacuna thereof, at any stage during the customer lifecycle, can contribute to conduct risk and eventual loss of trust in the institution.

Lets us look at trust from the financial institution customer’s lens. For this customer, trust starts at the very fundamental ask from these institutions – protecting money and identity (or customer data). Fulfilling this trust imperative, may not ease competition, however, not meeting these expectations can surely lead to damaging returns. Another trust imperative is the “promises” made by the financial institution to the customer. These could simply be – “mortgage application will be settled in 3 days” or “there is no annual fees applicable for a credit card”. Such promises are made all throughout the customer lifecycle with the financial institution and not meeting such promises frustrates the customers and regularly not meeting these promises leads to loss of trust and eventually leads to them switching over to more competent options in the marketplace. Another imperative for trust is the “long term relationship building” – wherein, banks are considered for the financial advice and well-being of their customers. This is where banks will consistently deliver products and services which are fair and transparent and meet the long-term financial well-being of the customer.

All these trust imperatives are needed by the financial institution to compete successfully in the market place. All of these together would make one’s brand and the brand promise are what the financial institution must live for. It also offers the most compelling differentiation from the competition.

Negative interest rates explained

2020-06-08T22:58:00.000+10:00

Even as the world slowly “reopens” amid record low interest rate environment almost across the globe, there are calls from the leading economists like in Australia, or from the US President, urging the respective central banks to move the negative interest rates. The Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, disagrees, and seems so is the RBA Governor, Philip Lowe, as well, given that RBA held fort and continued with the ultra-low interest rates (0.25%) in Australia, in their policy announcement last week.

Well, ultra-low or negative interest rates are not new for the world. Nordics, parts of EU and Japan has seen negative interest rates for some years now. Experience from these countries says, though, these were imagined and hoped for to be short term booster shots for the economy, however, they turned out to be sticky. And these economies have seen negative interest rates for more than 4 years now. We shall come back to them again. Lets first understand what negative interest rates mean or why are we seeing increasing calls for central banks to bring interest rates to the negative territory.

In layman terms, one can say, negative interest rates would mean, one is paid to borrow money from banks, or one is charged to keep money with the banks. Essentially, you are instigating people to borrow more and spend more and trigger the ripple effects of such spending to support the slowing economy. All thanks to Covid-19, as the world economy falls into the recessionary zone, negative interest rate is being strongly proposed as a tool to stimulate growth the world over.

As the central banks mull over this, negative interest rates would essentially mean, banks would be charged money to maintain excess liquidity in the system. Thus, disincentivising them to maintain excess deposits, and forcing them to lend more money.

As a banking customer, one’s cost of money becomes very cheap. One can borrow money at very low rates and may even be paid to borrow money. In Denmark, where negative interest rates have prevailed for a while now, upon taking a mortgage, a bank doesn’t pay the cash directly to the customer, instead, adjusts the mortgage amount outstanding each month by more than what the customer has paid back. Thereby, shortening the overall mortgage payback period for the customer. Such low rate mortgages can hopefully trigger a housing boom and have a spiralling effect on the economy, as one would then consume various other products and services associated with the purchase of the house.

Borrowers with existing debts are encouraged to consolidate their debts outstanding at a much lower rate, allowing them to save money, which can then be spent on other consumption items, which can support the overall economy.

Savers are discouraged to save with the banks. They either earn no interest on savings or are charged a fee to save. Thereby, encouraging them to spend more. Banks in Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, Japan, where negative interest rates have prevailed for some years now, give no interest to their customers who save with them. However, they do charge a fee for savings beyond a certain threshold.

Negative interest rates are bad for the savers. With no returns on the savings with the banks, and add to it the inflation (however, low it is), one is losing money by keeping money with the bank. If such a situation prevails, it is likely to change consumer behaviour in the long run, as one has traditionally been encouraged to save. This is likely to build a purely consumption driven society, as one is incentivised to spend and not save up. This may even affect the risk averse investors, as they may end up gravitating towards risky assets in search of returns, which are not available in traditional savings anymore. Senior Citizens, who are encouraged to keep their money in savings and enjoy the sunset years of their life through the steady interest income, will be another segment of customers who will be adversely affected. This is also likely to have long term effects on the retirement planning of individuals and thus investment strategies of retirement and pension funds.

Besides, the changing consumer behaviour, there are other challenges for banks as well. Negative rates would affect the bank bottom lines significantly. They will have to find ways to increase margins to maintain profitability. Prolonged ultra-low to negative interest rates, can affect the overall health of the banks and financial institutions and could eventually lead to them holding off lending and thereby affecting the economy adversely. With depositors shying away from keeping their savings with the banks, this may even lead to hoarding of cash, heard of during the Great Depression.

With changing customer behaviour, banks will have to change their product and service offerings to the customer. Innovative product offerings, for e.g. interest earnings on deposits tied to certain cash flows by the customer, can be a good start. Or simply tying interest earnings to investment products, can be options that can be looked at. Personalisation of the product or offer to the customer, depending on the customer’s individual circumstance, would be required.

Supported by some learnings from Japan, EU, one can safely say, that cheap money does not always spur business expansion and economic activity. It just takes cost of money out of equation. Having said this, economists around the world are urging central banks to go for them. And whether they will spur the world economy or not, is to be seen.

Bank revenues for the future

2020-05-31T23:52:00.000+10:00

As banks emerge from COVID-19, sooner than later, they will have to think of revenue and profitability. The traditional business avenues of lending and fees, will be in short supply, given the economic uncertainty all over. Banks will have to move away from just being the seller of financial products and services and start behaving like a trusted financial advisor (or may be a financial planner to start with). And what better time than today, when the unsurety is palpable.

Being a trusted advisor would start from being a trusted brand across all the touch points. This is the consistent delivery of brand promise across the customer interactions and behaviour. This is where banks would reach out to their customers with a focussed and personalised or contextualised service delivery.

Today is the time when customer needs support and guidance on how to wade through these times. This can be a starting point to gradually move the customer towards day to day financial planning to life cycle based financial planning. This can be done through simple goals based banking products and services, where banks can allow simple day-to-day spend based goals, like for daily expenses, to move future based goals like “travel to Hawaii”, in 6 months, to “down payment” for that dream house. Many banks already have such products and services, like we see in Australia. However, what we see in Australia is just a starting point, this needs to be taken further towards an end-to-end financial advisory to the customer. From goals for the individual, this needs to be taken up as the goals for the family, especially, when goals are pivoted around the family, like “purchase of the house” or “child’s education”. For such big investments/expenses, funds across the family are anyway pooled in. So, why not the goals? This can be a good source of funds and cross-sell/up-sell avenues for the banks and drive usage across products and services.

One thing that everyone is observing right now and are certain to hasten even further going forward, is the customer move to everything digital. With the demand for digital services going up significantly and customer experiences from other industries, in particular the digital native tech leaders like Google, Amazon, Nexflix, Facebook, Apple, etc, of the world, customers will expect similar experiences from their banks. This is where banks will have to think like these tech giants and adopt and adapt business models that support delivery of such curated experiences.

These business models will revolve around owning the end-to-end customer experience by orchestrating ecosystems. These ecosystems will be built by the banks where non-financial product and service manufacturers will co-exist and be part of the holistic customer experience distribution framework. The Open Banking paradigms that have been regulatory driven in most countries, and are being considered or evaluated at many others, are being purely looked at from the regulatory compliance lens. This is where banks will have to challenge the status quo and think beyond banking.

The regulatory regimes for open banking, where banks have opened the bank through APIs for the use by the 3^rd parties, can be used to build and orchestrate such ecosystems. Through these ecosystems, banks will earn revenue through non-financial products and services and increased customer contact and customer journeys. Customer contacts will increase by creating new customer propositions across customer journeys, more curated experiences. Such ecosystems can also help banks increase the conversion rates, by hyper-personalisation, to the extent of segment of one.

Imagine, if banks can build ecosystem for travel journey of the customer. Right from advising travel locations (based on customer preferences), to booking air tickets, hotels, local transportation, local eateries, to travel insurance, to travel card or forex, is all taken care of, and delivered by the bank, through the ecosystem that they have built. Each of these services in the travel journey of the customer, is provided to, by the bank’s partner, which becomes part of the bank’s ecosystem. To further personalise such experience (and increase the conversion rate), bank allows the choice of multiple partners in the ecosystem, which can render the required service in the journey. Customer can make the relevant choices based on her preference. This is where, banks become relevant to the customer and deliver the right experience, at the right time, and at the right channel.

Similarly, banks can look to build specialised ecosystems for specific needs. For e.g. an ecosystem for start-ups, or for specific industries like agriculture. Much would depend on where does one’s strengths lie and how much leverage one has in the marketplace. Bank’s can look to build ecosystem for SMEs, encompassing – taxation, accounting, payrolling, etc. services built in along with say transaction account from the bank.

Another way to “cast a wide net”, is to become part of the ecosystem of the large fintech players. These large fintech companies have a huge captive customer base, which would need financial products and services to meet their needs, or even to procure necessary service from the fintech. Bank can sell their products and services on these fintech platforms and enjoy the benefits of the expansive reach of these fintech. This increases the customer contact and increases the chances of a purchase tremendously. Banks can also become part of the purchase cycle at these fintech. For e.g., for a purchase of goods at Amazon, bank partners with Amazon, to offer a credit card, or even a loan to finish the purchase.

Banks can also leverage the digital services that they have built, for e.g.: digital identification, digital KYC, etc, which can be monetized when being used by the 3rd party partners or even these fintech. This is the model that banks must leverage in this open banking and open economy world, where banks would be seen as true enablers of the digital experience of the customers.

Design Thinking to shore up banking

2020-05-25T17:06:00.000+10:00

Design thinking involves understanding your customer much deeply...understanding their needs and how and what would interest them with the bank when the product or offer is given to them...this is the true outside-in approach, diagrammatically opposite to what the banks have traditionally been doing. It is much about empathising with the customer and giving it back to them. It is the building block of improving the customer experience that banks are trying hard (or may be hardly trying!)

It is required to do appropriate research to understand what the customer wants...what his needs are...where his needs are. The years of data and analytics investments should come in handy for some initial understanding of the customer. One can even do primary research and focus groups with customers to understand them better. Imagine your goal is to acquire deposits. Directly observe, what do customers do...where are they keeping their money...what motivates them...what leads to their frustration?

In your goal to acquire deposits as a bank, important is to think of where the problem in entire lifecycle of deposit acquisition, and deposit accumulation lies? Essentially what is the problem statement to achieve your goal? It will be worthwhile to stack up the current customer experiences and see what doesn’t and does makes sense?

Product managers need to ideate all the possible thoughts and solutions and see what resonates. There should be a capability to test these out with a limited set of resources. Initially, it could just be simple simulation of various scenarios and checking them out for different situations. And then test launch with either a select group of customers, or even the bank staff, for a limited period of time. It would be interesting to keep a feedback loop, to gather the feedback and improve the offering, before its launched for good to the wider customer base.

The most encompassing theme of design thinking is empathy, and hence, the customer, as the fulcrum of all decision making. Thus, customer needs are paramount. With this belief, product managers will have a customer centred offering, which not only serves the customer’s larger purpose and drives up the customer experience, but also meets bank’s demands of revenue and profitability.

Personalisation of the product or service to the customer needs is one such simple way of applying design thinking in day-to-day banking. To facilitate this seamlessly, banks needs a process and a capability which can enable it across the products and services and customer segments within the bank. Imagine, if the bank is able to personalise the deposit accumulation offer to the customer, who does a lot of month-on-month credit card transactions, or a personalise the deposit rates because the customer utilises the overdraft facility. Important to note, it is for “a” customer.

In the open banking and open economy world, when it can be much simpler and easier for the bank to design offerings for the actual need of the customer, and thereby, own the end-to-end customer experience. Imagine, the bank being able to fulfill the entire home buying journey of the customer, where the actual need is the house, while the mortgage provided by the bank is just incidental. Other services in this journey – brokers, legal services, utilities, white goods, logistics, etc, can become part of the bank’s ecosystem and larger catalogue of products and services that the bank can offer. The customer comes to one stop shop and gets all the services in a package that fulfills his actual need.

Another way to imagine use of design thinking to banking is the movement away from fee-fleecing account based model to customer-centric value based model. Of course, the widespread digitalisation, driving personalisation and value based experiences from other industries, leading banking customers to expect the same. Such value based models are necessitated by such customer desires. At the heart of it is customer empathy and design thinking. Instead of paying high transaction fees on accounts, customers are willing to pay for personalised experience, including relationship based pricing.

Digital companies in other industries have taken such value based models to drive supreme customer experience and brand value for themselves. One such company has recently decided to discontinue the subscription and hence, the subscription fee, for the inactive customers. Their belief to charge only if the value if being created for the customer, is the defining moment not only for their industry, but for the other industries as well.

Similarly, design thinking can be used in multiple other ways to offer curated customer experiences. It is an important management principle that banks are starting to leverage and gain wholesome benefits across the board.

Gamification and banking

2020-05-18T09:50:00.000+10:00

Are customers rational? Think about it for a moment… And you will find that like you and me, any customer is emotional at times. At times, he is logical too, but at certain instances, intuitive and inconsistent. Guess what, he gets emotional at winning a “candy crush” level on his mobile, or even at not winning one, and wants to try again, and again, until he wins. Such behavioural aspects and learnings thereof can be leveraged in the world of finance via use of gamification strategies.

Banks can leverage simple gamification ideas like “framing” – where one presents the options carefully in front of the customer and with consistent reinforcements. It could simply be offering a positive bias for a particular financial behaviour, or, a negative bias for a different behaviour. Bank can also use “herd instinct” – where banks can drive customers like a herd towards an objective. For e.g., steering customers towards a particular goal or a financial behaviour. Goals based ideas are already picking up in many markets to achieve better personal finance objectives. However, underlying principles of gamification are at play.

Banks can use gamification to entice customers to bank with them in groups and apply these behavioural biases to guide customers to an objective that is a win-win for both the sides. For e.g. a simple offer for a family, where, as a family if they spend, say, $2,000 on their credit card each month, they get bonus cash back, and if they do more, they get more. And all along the month, one keeps track of these spends at the customer or the family level and communicates regularly to shore up the required behaviour from the customer. Such simple yet powerful strategies have given banks tremendous success in the mid to long term.

Gamification is about designing the curated customer experience that matches the needs of the customer and takes them on a journey. There has to be a sense of self expression of the customer, hence, this has to be personalised, has to be competing in nature, for e.g., competing for a campaign benefit against fellow customers, and has to be transparent to the customer, especially in the progress made at any point in time.

Simple ideas like providing comparison savings rates for similar customer population, or progress gaps shown in temperature gauges, or collection and management of individual or family savings goals, can go a long way in utilising gamification to drive right customer behaviour and achieve business benefits. Imagine, the goals based constructs discussed above, can not only help customer build their emergency funds (and improve personal finance), but allow banks to get low cost funds with them.

Gamification is not just about points and badges (ofcourse, getting name on the leader board does give one a lot of satisfaction!). More and more are engaging in these games. In such times of work-from-home, even more. According to research, 53% of the regular gamers are young, between the age of 18-49, which is a sweet spot for the bank. Engage them early for a long term relationship. Bulk of them (more than 65%) play games on their mobile devices, which would have surely gone up even more in today’s world. This opens up tremendous opportunity for banks to use gamification to direct customer behaviour.

Banking in these unusual times…

2020-05-10T15:51:00.000+10:00

World around us it totally different than what was 8 weeks back. On one hand, all countries are working tirelessly to control the spread of Covid-19 and thus limit its ever-increasing and far-reaching impact on their respective economies, and on the other, the very countries have returned to the low interest environment, to fuel in the economy, already reeling under.

All the lockdown, work from home, is already putting pressure on banks to driver better self-service digital experience for their customers. Thereby, hastening the speed of digital transformation at the banks. Banks who are thinking to drive digital experience from front to bank, will continue to survive and come out with flying colours. This would mean, banks need to be nimbler in their systems and operations, agile in their ability to respond to the customer’s requests, and in many cases anticipate the requests beforehand, and deliver a curated experience. This could well lead to complete self-service offerings through digital channels, where customers can create their experiences, their pricing plans by themselves – based on what they want and how they want, or better be, how much they are willing to pay or commit to.

Such times will surely bring in more regulation and compliance towards customer transparency and customer experience delivery. This would lead banks to be more open with their customers in terms of what is communicated, when is it communicated, and how is it communicated. Banks will have to have automated processes of experience orchestration, which is not just jazzy front-end channels, but more around product/service, pricing, offer delivery. They should be able to deliver these on-demand and still maintain the required levels of transparency and controls. The capacity to orchestrate such experiences with compliance would segregate the best from the better.

For long, we have heard that data is the key in today’s digital world. And guess what – banks have possibly the best data on their customers – be it their demographic information or their transaction data or their balance data. To top it, Open Banking adds to such already existing data, as now you can even get information on your customer’s balances, transactions with the competition next door. Leveraging this huge amount of data to your advantage is the key. Using such data to create targeted campaigns, offers, pricing, potentially using the data to change or drive the customer behaviour, is going to deepen customer relationships, drive loyalty and delivery sustainable value for both the sides.

Such data can be used to create personalised curated offers for the customer. If we can link up the household or any such network/group, we may hit a gold rush. Imagine, a bank being able to draw in funds from the entire household, by giving a personalised pricing across the household. Banks also have one of the biggest intangible assets with them – their customer’s trust! Envision the power of data leading to targeted offerings, enhancing the customer’s experience and thereby their trust in the bank!

A micro-segment (to the segment of one) targeted approach where the special pricing and offer is linked to the profitability and propensity to accept the offer, could be a game changer in these tough times. Customers get what they prefer or want, and banks get a more sustainable business for the longer term. And this potentially creates a virtuous circle of deep relationships and better revenues and profitability.

A bank in Asia, has been able to drive family-based offers to link the funds and spending across the family. This has successfully drove up the balances and card spend multi-x and has made the bank believe in the delivery of curated experiences for their customers as the way forward for their business.

Already the world over, the banks were being forced to work on better customer outcomes, and that could mean foregoing fees and delivery of better customer experiences. Such approach to banking would orchestrate the paradigm shift from the high fee model to value-based model – wherein, you charge the customer for the value you deliver. Value through what is being delivered is what the customer wants, how he wants and when he wants, and thus the customer is okay to pay for such value being delivered. This hyper-personalised, per-customer approach, coupled with the data that banks already have, can deliver the true customer experience the customers of today desire from their banks.

Enterprise Loyalty for banks and financial services – Part 2

2015-08-30T21:11:00.000+10:00

I strongly believe Loyalty should be more than just point calculation and gift redemption. Banks should use Loyalty to give a fair deal to their customers. This in turn can deliver on capturing share of the wallet and increasing stickiness.

A loyalty program should allow banks to establish a 360 degree view of their customers, by looking holistically across multiple dimensions – Customer relationship value, relationship tenure, product ownership and usage, desired channel behaviour. In fact, loyalty programs should allow a blend of customer’s demographics, banking behaviour, needs to deliver on loyalty. This should be a program which uses products, channels, and customer demographics as a mix to achieve holistic rewards program success.

Such a holistic loyalty program will use a harmonious combination of various “customer attributes” like – customer segment, age, lifetime value, credit rating, demographics, etc; and, “account attributes” like – account type, balances, currency, etc; along with “product attributes” like – product type, frequency of product used, no of products taken, etc, and, “transaction attributes” like – transaction channel, location of transaction, time of transaction, etc. This combination will assign rewards for a desirable behaviour and no rewards (or even deduct) for an undesirable behaviour.

These rewards can ideally be accumulated and used against benefits which can be broadly classified as – financial or lifestyle rewards (monetary or non-monetary, as mentioned in my previous post). A lifestyle reward can be anything from – gifts from a catalogue, movie tickets, gift vouchers, lounge access, etc. And a financial reward can be cash back, fee waivers, discounts, special price plans, higher free limits, etc.

Loyalty program would also give flexibility to accumulate rewards on multiple grounds. Banks can reward their customers contextually on events, transactions, even lifecycle. One should expect capability to reward for customer birthdays, anniversaries, new year, festivals, etc. These events can potentially lead to more sales and transactions. Banks may also want to reward their customer for relationship anniversary, or may be a new product subscription. Such a holistic program also drives customer experience.

Given the market around us these days, the banks can go all out and develop relationships across multiple lifestyle franchises to deepen their redemption catalogue. These can be Jewellery, Hotels, coffee shops, Air Miles, restaurants, gym membership, lounges, club membership, etc. All such redemption options not only gives customers options to choose from, it also strengthens the loyalty program and goes a long way in creating a strong brand value.

To add to this, a holistic rewards program should allow for points adjustment, points transfer, points aggregation, points acceleration and even points expiry. This is something that again adds to the depth of the loyalty program and drives customer experience again.

A loyalty program should also give banks flexibility to run partner or merchant loyalty program as well. This should be run as usual customer loyalty scheme for a single partner or merchant. These schemes can be run as multiple tariff schemes for revenue share or commissions. Banks can even reward their merchants to do more transactions with you.

Another use of a holistic rewards program can be using it for Sweepstakes or Raffle draws for customers. This again goes a long way in building the customer relationship and stickiness.

All in all, a holistic rewards program should enable banks to get close to their customers and align the entire organisation around the mission of enhancing overall customer experience. It should bring in competitive advantage, improve operational efficiency, and enhance overall revenues and overall drive up overall customer satisfaction.

Enterprise Loyalty for Banks and Financial Services - Part 1

2015-08-27T20:39:00.001+10:00

When we speak of loyalty and loyalty points, most of us today would know what I mean. Not only that, one is quickly reminded of a credit card and a POS machine J Traditionally for banks, loyalty was synonymous with credit cards and vice-versa. As end consumers of credit card facilities, we always associated a credit card with the loyalty points and benefits that it would bring. And we were or even today happy using such loyalty points against some gifts or merchandise or voucher, etc.

Keeping the omnipresence of credit cards and their loyalty points away for moment, let’s understand what loyalty is and why one needs it.

Literally speaking, “Loyalty” would mean, “being loyal to someone” and hence, continuing the relationship. Well, banking relationships are all monetary and not so much by conscience. And with the ever growing competition, how does one make sure, their customers are loyal to them and stick to them and continue to do and bring in business day in and day out for long-long years? Well, that is where you need a holistic rewards solution which can help you meet your objectives. You give a monetary or a non-monetary benefit as a reward for being loyal and drive desirable customer behaviour in tandem.

Not only this, with growing financial literacy among customers and ability of customers to consummate easy and real-time information over social media, they also think holistically across their banking relationships. They also think that they should be rewarded appropriately for the overall relationship and not just credit cards.

All such market and customer driven behaviour dictate a need for a holistic loyalty program for a bank. Such a program should definitely cut across all the banking products and services (including credit cards) and help the bank achieve their key broad objectives from their loyalty program.

Using a loyalty program, typically, one would want to “Reduce churn” by retaining the existing customer base and help wade through the competition. One would also want to “Increase revenue” by increased use of products and services and increase share of wallet and support cross-selling. And overall, one would surely want to “Attract new customers” by an attractive referral program and incentivised marketing program to aid direct walk-ins.

A loyalty program would have 3 basic tenets around which it will revolve – Transact – Transact and capture all the transactions that a customer would do; Earn – Earn loyalty benefits or loyalty points based on the nature of the transaction; and Transaction more & Redeem – Transact more and increase your earnings and then use these earnings or burn these earnings or redeem your earnings against certain set of benefits, both financial and non-financial.

A loyalty program would also give you a chance to drive a desirable customer behaviour and test and create opportunities. Let’s take simple customer behaviour, say, “purchase of a new product”, to understand this. A typical “call to action” could be – “Buy Product X and receive Y points”. By such a call to action, you are driving your customers to buy that product. You are enticing them to gain those loyalty benefits by purchasing the product. This not only gives a chance to generate more revenue by sale of a new product, but, also gives a chance to deepen the relationship and increase share of the wallet. Let’s look at similar such scenarios.

Another key desirable customer behaviour is “increase in spending” and you may ask your customers – “Spend X with us within this week and receive Y rewards”. This is a very common strategy to increase spending. At times, banks use it to increase credit card transaction volumes over a short period of time. This gives an opportunity to increase average spending and have a psychological edge, where the customer feels related to the bank. On the similar lines, if you use such a strategy over a longer period of time, it has a potential to change the customer behaviour and further deepen the relationships. It also helps reward long-term relationships, which in turn creates more brand value.

Such a holistic loyalty program can also help banks drive their customers towards low cost channels like internet or mobile banking or ATMs. All that banks need to do is add channel of transaction as a parameter to drive rewards or even disincentive undesirable behaviour. Banks adopting such a strategy have been fairly successful in achieving their objective to move away customers from costly channels and allow them to self serve.

To increase volumes and create recurring sales, banks usually would entice their customers to transact a specific number of times in a specific time period. They would usually say – “Do A of X in Y time to get Z rewards”. Such strategies can help drive products like bill payments or fund transfers. There are many such strategies which can be adopted to drive desirable customer behaviour and achieve other objectives from a loyalty program.

OROP - is NaMo that foolish?

2015-08-26T15:29:00.001+10:00

One Rank One Pension (OROP) has been taking media and political stage for a while in India. It was a sort of clarion call from Narendra Modi (NaMo) during last year's General Elections, where, he committed to OROP and confirmed its application, as the leading PM candidate.

However, its been more than a year - barring a few mentions of commitment towards OROP by PM Modi, Defence Minister Parrikar and a slew of other central ministers, there has been no public confirmation of any sorts which can placate the protesting ex-Armed forces personnel.

There have been many views and arguments on its financial implications and economic sense, especially the fiscal burden on the Central Govtt. Read an article, which said, for all the forces included, at best this could be in the range of INR 25,000 crores. And half of which is already addressed by plugging the LPG subsidy leakage. So 50% is already there, rest can easily be addressed by plugging many such subsidy leakages that the Modi govtt anyway intends to go after aggressively. This surely makes a strong case for its implementation.

Well, the other important aspects would be the long term fiscal effect and challenges that it will bring in, atleast for say next 5-10 years at a minimum and what happens after this demand is met (these protests are now making is like a big demand). How will other forces and govtt departments react to it? They are already rumoured to sit on the periphery and look at the current drama. This will likely snowball into a bigger problem and will be politically fanned as well. How does NaMo handle it?

Now on the current protests, there are reports that these are being politically managed. Knowing that is difficult to be practically implemented and NaMo having committed to it, all political parties are using it as a good canvas to paint their sympathy and empathy picture. Some reports also say that a sr. ex-army officer, close to the grand old party of India was parachuted to lead these protests by RaGa.

Knowing NaMo, he understands the political problems that it can bring in and also the possible political benefits he can reap, he wouldn't ideally let it go thus far. Based on back of the envelope estimates, this currently affects 25-30 million people and NaMo is too sensible a politician to ignore or not understand what does that mean.

My personal sense is that had there not been some serious internal tangles and / or issues with it, it would have been announced by now. Given the media fancy to get to the bottom of everything pertaining NaMo, even they have not been able to figure out the real problem in there. Even the protesting ex-servicemen, after multiple meetings, haven't disclosed anything so far.

There was a rumour that OROP might be announced by NaMo on his Independence Day speech. Which, ofcourse didn't happen. And pat came a tweet from the CM of Delhi - PM should announce OROP on Aug 15. Everyone wants to bake their bread while the flame is strong ;) And ofcourse, the brickbats are for NaMo anyway. And not to mention Congress and others, already playing political games, knowing very well that they have nothing to loose here. NaMo is sitting on a political hot potato, which will hurt him more than taking them far ;)

No one until now knows if it will implemented or not. Or by when it will be implemented. May be, what might be useful for NaMo would be to come out and address everyone on OROP and give a full clean statement on where it is and possibly its timeline for implementation. And most importantly, why its being delayed.

Nathan's dilemma

2015-04-04T18:52:00.000+11:00

Nathan worked with his team and got the proposal ready. Well, submitting a proposal during a formal tender process is a different ball game, where you submit a lot of hard copies and a lot more. However, this one was a bit different, as the prospect wanted Nathan to make the submission in soft copy over email. One may think that to be an easy game. However, it comes with its own challenges. Preparing the soft copy proposal was easy for Nathan, as he was writing it in MS word and then saving it in pdf file, all looked easy. All was ready, he sent it to his manager to review and approve.

And then came the biggest dilemma so far in Nathan’s career. His bossed tossed a question so pertinent that he felt for long confused with the response he made. Given that the proposal was to be submitted in soft copy over email, the dilemma was whether to submit it in this fashion or not. Soft format, gives you ease, however, it opens up possible problems due to blatant sharing of such emails across the organisation and probable leakages of sensitive techno-commercial information. You don’t usually know who will lay their hands on such emails and information and when all these eventually come into the public domain.

All these were very logical questions and doubts and they came to Nathan’s mind, only when his boss asked him – should we share such information on email and risk it becoming a public property? They even discussed doing the Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA), for which they didn't really have time, hence, doesn't work now. Nathan thought for a moment and replied that we as a vendor now and a partner in future should believe in our potential customer and give them the benefit of the doubt and take this risk. Not that submitting in person was not an option, it was always open and Nathan could have easily travelled to the prospect’s office and submitted the proposal in person. But then, Nathan’s idea was not only to showcase their belief in the prospect and her process but also give them the confidence that they are ready to abide by their process. He said that if we cannot believe in our customer, then, how can they believe in us? Nathan’s boss really liked it and agreed to move ahead and submit the proposal on email.

Though Nathan made the decision and his boss also agreed to it...but deep inside, he was quite confused. Confused, because this could potentially create more market problems, where their sensitive information changes hands just like that. He was scared too, as it was his belief in doing so, which his boss too agreed to, and if their fears come true, he lands himself in potentially bigger soup. All such thoughts kept going through his mind. He thought again and decided in favour of his previous decision. And believed if something bad happens, he will stick to his decision. And will fight, if the need arose. Nathan finally and rightfully submitted the proposal...on email :)

What lay ahead was a series of discussions and calls with the prospect on the proposal and days full of anxiety, as Nathan wanted to seek ‘real feedback’ from the prospect. After a few days post submission, he called up his point of contact at the customer’s place and sought feedback. He was told that it’s under review and with the sr. management to consider. He also sought some competition related information, as he learnt that there are 2 more vendors who submitted their proposals – one incumbent and one, a new like Nathan.

Nathan discussed this feedback with his boss and learnt that this may not be the real feedback and there might be something cropping up behind the scenes that we are not privy of and may not learn that ever. He understood that all this is not because they are against us and don’t want to share this information, but, because that’s how things will always be. To gather such information, we need to develop some good relationships and good connects who can always share such information with you on and off. And you need at least 2-3 such connects, so that you can gather more information and cross check each other, to be sure.

This was sooner than later becoming a much needed learning for Nathan, as after a few more days he learnt that the incumbent vendor has been asked to review his proposal, as the evaluation team felt the need to do so. That was quite baffling, to say the least, as at least Nathan was sure, he wasn't asked to review his proposal. His mind was full of a few more doubts – why would anyone do that? Probably, they want his to match my proposal or may be even better it. Or the third one was the best and the incumbent has been asked to review it. Sounded a bit confusing, but, in sales, anything is possible. Nathan had heard stories of people being smug about the deal getting through, while, the competition enjoying a luxury resort and signed the contract, and the former is not even aware. These were stories which were heard of and in sales folklore, such stories were aplenty. But, this time, Nathan was experiencing such things all by himself.

Here was a situation where Nathan thought he had worked up the relationship and connects quite fast and he stood a fair chance to give a tough fight. But suddenly, he is met with a situation which he hadn’t experienced thus far and was a bit stuck on how to get more information and validate this piece. He decided to travel to the customer place, stay there for a few days and try and meet more people to access more information. He discussed with his boss and they agreed and off went in search of more information...or probably learning the ropes of enterprise sales.

Nathan’s tryst with Enterprise solution sales

2015-03-31T19:27:00.000+11:00

Nathan is trying hard to break the shackles and get through with his first deal in some time. He gets a lead for a solution where his organisation is not a very strong player; in fact, they are one of the many solution providers in the market. To make it even worse, they are late in the game and the competition has already got their set pieces in place. Nevertheless, Nathan throws his hat in the middle and wants to give it a shot.

The opportunity is qualified as there is a sure shot need for the solution. The prospect is eagerly evaluating the vendors and Nathan carries a solution that should fit in the prospect’s needs. Now he tries to sort out his pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, called Sales process and its requirements. On one hand, Nathan is aware; their story for that solution is not great, even though, their solution meets the prospects needs and requirements. On the other, his relationship in the account is still at its infancy. 2 basic ingredients for the sales process were weak as Nathan decided to get into the game.

To overcome these challenges, Nathan decided to stay in the prospect’s place, spend some quality time with them. This would not only give him a chance to build rapport with the prospect, but also allow him to get hold of so much quality information. Be it, key requirements from the solution to competitive landscape to the prospect’s thought process and views on Nathan, his solution and his company, and last but not the least the list of key decision makers, all were the gold mine of information that would help Nathan in his sales pursuit.

Now came the hardest part. As Nathan decided to stay put and continue his struggle, he tried to meet up with some relevant folks at the prospect’s organisation. He called them up, sent some emails, requesting to catch up at their office or for a cup of coffee nearby. But nothing materialised. Each time he called, either they would say they are busy or they have nothing much or new to share. His quest to gather information that could help in the pursuit was going nowhere.

Nathan was completely disheartened. His idea of staying back to get the relationship going was not working at all. To a typical sales guy, he got all the more doubtful of this whole engagement. There were questions in his mind, all of a different nature. Is this selection stage managed and there is a vendor who is already selected (at least unofficially)? Do they not like us? What is the problem? What hinders their willingness (or not?) to meet me? Where is the problem? Questions were many, but answers none. 2 days had already gone by and nothing really had happened. To make matters worse, Nathan’s response to the prospect’s requirements in terms of a proposal has to go out in a few days time. This lack of time compounded the problems around him.

Nathan continued his struggle against the indifferent behaviour of the prospect. And finally, on the 4^th day of being continuously bombarded by calls and emails, the mid management guy from the prospect agreed to oblige Nathan. They met over a cup of coffee and Nathan got going. They spent close to an hour together and Nathan made notes as he spoke. At the end of it, Nathan was a happy man and could figure out some pieces of the jigsaw puzzle he was trying to solve. A more confident Nathan came out of the coffee shop.

Better armed, Nathan called up his team and shared the information. They decided to use that information in their proposal and draft their responses accordingly. The proposal was to go out in 5 days. Nathan and team started to work on the proposal. And meanwhile, Nathan continued his push to meet more people from the prospect’s side. To his good luck, he could meet another important person the next day. After being able to gloss over some important information over the last 2 days, Nathan decided to go back to his place and get the proposal ready.

Team India we are proud of you!! We will be there with you, always!!

2015-03-28T10:52:00.001+11:00

Well, the title of this post would have set the record straight; however, I want to put in a disclaimer, right at the start. The thoughts are abound in my mind, however, they all still say the same – Team India, I am proud of you! I am really happy at the way you fought during the CWC15 and will continue to cheer you and myself the moment you land on the ground in India colours.

When we started the CWC15, no one gave India an iota of chance to reach the Semis, leave alone the fascinating things they did on the way (may be for some, beating Pakistan was a given ).

Well, I always believed Team India would do good, but not the way they did. Topping the Pool looked difficult for sure, when you have supremely talented South Africa and ever unpredictable Pakistan for company.

Let’s talk about some pre-CWC form, while Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane had an excellent Australian summer with some exquisite innings in tests, they struggled to carry the same form into the triangular ODI series just before the CWC. And to add to this misery, none of the other batsmen had a good time in Australia, be it the tests or the ODIs. Everyone believed in the Indian batting line-up for their talent always. However, the real problem for MS Dhoni was his bowling ammunition. His strike bowlers were neither able to hunt wickets nor able to control the run flow. And then, his key strike bowler (whom he has always believed in), R. Ashwin, seemed to have lost faith in his own abilities and struggled in most of the matches he played in Australia until the CWC.

With this baggage and poor pre-CWC form, it does look tremendous how Team India had performed throughout the CWC15. Scoring back-to-back 300+ scores against the Pakistani and South African attack was as equally worthy as taking wickets regularly all throughout, until the Semis. Taking all wickets on offer continuously for 7 matches took everyone by a pleasant surprise and made the 7-0 score line possible that we die-hard Team India fans would always cherish.

As a fan, I can’t comment on what made this turnaround happen. Was it some mental coaching? Or Was it playing so long in Australia that worked to India’s advantage? Or was it playing in the CWC that lifted the game of Team India suddenly? I don’t have an answer. Experts, ex-players, all may have their own reasoning behind this resurgence and performance in the CWC...but for a fan, I was so happy to see those performances coming through and always proud of those wins! Here, I must give credit to the team management (MS Dhoni, Ravi Shastri, Duncan Fletcher) and selectors (more to the team management), for believing in the team they had and taking them to the CWC, in spite of their poor form. One may say, thats the best they had...but they still believed in them. It’s so easy to react and change when the chips are down.

I don’t remember an Indian match during this CWC, which I didn’t watch throughout, or I didn’t have fun tweeting or commenting about on Facebook. It was my team which was performing and it was them and me having fun alike. For my team, it was fun giving those performances and winning, and for me, it was fun for me enjoying those performances on the TV and social media alike. It all worked like a charm. Oh it went to the extent, that my friends started making fun of me, for my such regular tweets and hashtags (some called me hashtag Gandhi ). Guys, I enjoyed every bit of it :)

The question now is to each one of you, who call themselves, the followers of, fans of Team India and those who were so proud of their team reaching the Semis of CWC15 – what suddenly changed with one match that we lost, that led to the outrage that we have seen over the last few days? Yes, we lost, but we lost to the better team. Yes, that ended our CWC15 journey, but it would end for all but 1 team anyway. Just that, ours ended a few days earlier. Its sports, and one wins and the other loses.

The other day, when Pakistan lost to us, there was equally bad outrage by Pakistan fans in Pakistan. There was media coverage and reports of people burning Pakistan players’ effigies and thrashing their TV sets. And we Indian laughed at them, made fun (at least on social media) at such foolishness. Some of us also criticised such behaviour. And now, we are doing the same thing to our own team. I am sure; there would be many a Pakistani who would be laughing at our expense. Well, leave that for a moment, thats their problem.

Team India needs support of its fans. We fans need them equally too. This is some sort of a symbiotic relationship that we have. Team needs their fans to support them always, pep them to perform better. And fans need their teams’ performances which they can cherish and at times, also have some fun amongst themselves on social media, like I and many of my ilk had during the CWC15. It is this time, they need us the most, and we must do the needful.

As a fan, I am at pains reading news articles which say security has been beefed up outside MS Dhoni's house or Rohit Sharma's house or for that matter, social media's toast (or roast, since that sounds familiar to many :)) since he played that fateful pull shot to Mitchel Johnson, Virat Kohli. We as a society should introscept, should reflect upon ourselves and see, is this we want to give back to our team who fights, not for themselves, but for ourselves, for our country.

All said and done, we lost to a better team on the 26^th.Look at the way they batted all through out, especially in the last 7-8 overs. Those, Faulkner shots, Johnshon cameo made the difference in the first innings. Not only that, the way they bowled, just superb. Some of the best death bowling one would ever see, and when the rules of the game are simply not in your favour. None of our middle over batsmen were able to get singles, let alone score freely. It feels bad to lose and more so to the Aussies in a CWC Semis, however, we lost to a better team. And overall, we should be proud of the Team India's, our team's performance all throughout CWC15.

Are the best 4 in the semis?

2015-03-24T00:07:00.000+11:00

Are the 4 semi finalists the best teams in the CWC15? If you look on paper and at pre-tournament form, probably Not. In fact, there would have been many eyebrows raised if someone would have predicted India to be amongst the Top 4. Though, 2 of the world’s best batsmen ever, predicted this list of Top 4.

Now, looking at the performance of the teams in the CWC15 so far, these 4 are by far the best teams. Very predictable and more or less consistent performances from them and no wonder, the batsmen and bowlers from these teams are holding the top few slots in all the statistics charts for the CWC15. Even some of the best catches are from these teams only. How can one forget the acrobatic Baz at the boundary or Rilee Rossouw and AB catching some beauties, or MS Dhoni taking a diving catch behind the stumps or may be the excellent slip catching by the Aussies.

While, South Africa was the first team to reach the Semis, they have been a bit off-shade when put under pressure. Consider the India match, when, their bowlers were taken to task and their batsmen were made to chase 300+. Or their match against Pakistan, where up against a quality bowling attack, chasing a modest total, they lost the game. Take Amla, and AB out of the equation, their batting line-up looks easy to get. They can buckle down under continuous pressure. They have a bowling unit, who can win you matches from nowhere. And their fielding always adds 20-30 additional runs.

India was the second team to partner South Africa in the Semis line-up. No one would have given India a chance for CWC15 before the world cup – all because of their woeful form. Famed batting line-up was not cracking at all and Virat Kohli who was in a purple patch in the Aussie Test series, suddenly lost touch in the Triangular ODI series against Australia and England. And then, their bowling, everyone lambasted them right, left and centre. But cometh the CWC and cometh the best performances from this team. They have hunted in packs. All batsmen have scored and scored together. All bowlers have bowled superbly and again together. They have gotten 70 wickets from 7 matches and none of their bowlers have ripped through the opposition. All have gelled together to hunt down the opposition. And to top it all with some brilliant ground fielding and catching, India are on a roll, with 7 out of 7 in CWC15. Their biggest problem still is their bowling. Can this bowling attack taken on the Aussie juggernaut?

Aussies, are one of the per-tournament favourites and they have lived to that billing so far. They have produced, some ruthless performances, except against their Trans-Taman rivals, New Zealand. That game was anybody’s and the lucky one scraped through. Their batting had not really clicked big thus far, especially, they top 2. Though, Aron Finch and David Warner have a century each in CWC15, however, they haven’t done anything worthwhile by their lofty standards. Its been mostly the middle order and the last middle order which has worked for them beautifully. Their bowling attack is excellent, which has worked marvellously for them so far, with Mitchel Starc at the top of the ladder for CWC15 with 18 wickets so far. Other bowlers have been contributing regularly too. The only problem they might face, especially at SCG is the lack of a quality spinner. So far, they have worked with Glenn Maxwell, who is not a regular bowler. Their attack looks one dimensional in that sense and much would depend upon the pitch for the March 26^th game.

The New Zealanders are also having a ball. Unusual pre-tournament favourites, and not being the dark horse like during the previous CWCs, the Kiwis have played some good cricket. But I believe, they can also falter under pressure, as was visible during their match against Australia. Other than that match, they have not really been tested too so far in the CWC15. Whats been working from them are the starts that Baz has been able to give them. And with Williamson also in excellent form, they marched past during the initial league phase. And then Guptill rose to the occasion and scored a century and a double century in the QF. Their bowling has been too good, with Boult and Southee knocking everyone over. And Daniel Vettori has been magnificent as always.

In the first semi-final between New Zealand and South Africa at the smallish Eden Park at Auckland, it will be fun to see how the Kiwi bowlers who have been fabulous so far in CWC15 rise up to the challenge posed by AB and Hashim Amla. And how the arguably the best bowler in the world, Dale Steyn work against the Baz onslaught. For me the result of these duels will decide how this match progresses. And of course, how they handle such pressure. For NZ, it should be to apply continuous pressure at all times, as the team from the Rainbow nation is known to not handle pressure well.

The second semi-final between the hot favourites and home team Australia and team with the momentum, India should be a spectacle to watch. A lot will depend on how the laid in pitch behaves at the marvellous SCG. Already, there are calls for a local team supportive pitch suited for fast bowlers. Traditionally, SCG pitch supports spin bowling and let’s see how the curator acts on the 26^th. It is a 50-50 game, with Aussies having a slight advantage due to home conditions and a lethal bowling team. A lot will also depend on how Indian new ball bowlers handle the attacking Warner and co upfront. I believe it has to be the same approach, as so far, for Indian bowlers in the CWC15 –take wickets regularly. And the same approach for the batsmen – don’t give too many wickets at the start, settle down and one batsmen out of the top 3 should bat through. For Australia, it should be the same too, else, this match can go out of your hands anytime. India has a great momentum by their side. Let’s see a full house on Thursday.

For me, this CWC dominated by the batsmen, with so many 300+ scores, 400+ 6s hit and 2 double centuries already, the fate of the semi-finals and then the finals will be decided by the bowlers. And that’s the irony of the CWC15. Or may be that says it all – sports is a great leveller. There will always be a balance somewhere and that’s so interesting and heartening to see.

All in all, a stupendous semi-final line-up, which should live up to the expectations of the fans. Crunch times for equals. From here on, it’s only about performing on that day. Who handles and manages the pressure of the CWC semi-final will come out trumps. And may the best teams win.

The world lost another Shining Soul, a True Leader today!

2015-03-23T17:20:00.001+11:00

“This is not a game of cards. This is your life and mine.” He thundered at a rally – really? But then, he needed that to raise a sense of ownership amongst the people who were reeling under the onslaught that separation from the then Malaysia had led them into. And he profoundly did so. Such was his fierce sense of duty to the people he served selflessly until the last days of his life. A duty steadfastly led by a desire to build an equal and just Singapore, a tiny island with no natural resources or military power for that matter.

Against near impossible circumstances, he led a fledgling fishing village from third world to first, a place where the original flag bearers of the first world, throng to and be part of the glory today. While his wisdom, thoughts, knowledge on everything about Singapore is well documented, it was his sheer determination that made things happen. He often stated that the only thing Singapore has is people and its strong work ethic and the Singapore of today is an absolute testimony of the same belief and ideology.

A statesman to the core, he was always consulted by the global leaders, on any Asian matter. From Henry Kissinger to Richard Nixon to Margaret Thatcher, all had praises for his clarity of thought and leadership acumen.

He was a true visionary that made Singapore, one of the best places to live in...I as a proud resident of Singapore, who has lived the Singaporean way for the past 6 years and been to many places across the globe, can vouch for.

As a fellow Singapore resident, I bid farewell to this extraordinary man, Mr Lee Kuan Yew. In the shimmering landscape of Singapore, we remember not just a remarkable world leader, but the man who gave a tiny sea hamlet an identity to be proud of. And that will forever be his legacy. Rest in Peace, Mr Lee Kuan Yew.

Revenue Management & Business Assurance is strategic to success at all times

2014-09-15T23:12:00.000+10:00

How often do we hear from the banks that business climate is tough and hence, lack of growth? How often we see the central banks commenting on the liquidity situation locally and globally? You may ask, why globally for a central bank? Well, no economy today is separated from what is happening in the Middle East or how the US or the Euro zone react to the interest rates and affect the financial markets globally. Some Arab Spring in the Middle East may lead to a regional turmoil, which affects the global crude oil output, thus, pushing the crude oil prices to unprecedented levels. Or the US Fed announcing the pruning of the QE program, sending the global financial markets into a tizzy. And locally, of course, there are multiple factors at work, which may put financial markets at risk of losing control and growth.

Top up these challenges with the most critical of them all – customer. The customer expectations of a bank have completely changed and they are increasingly being compared with other organisations they interact with – retail, telecom, for example. The ease with which a customer can change banks has increased tremendously. With just a click of a mouse or a phone call, everything can be done. It has become as simple as that. In such a challenging environment, increasing customer value is not only the key to growth, but for survival too.

Again, keeping the customer at the fulcrum of all decision making is becoming essential. For banks and financial services organisations, increasing customer centricity means creating and offering innovative products and pricing strategies – the ones that suit the customer needs and keep him to bank with you.

Convergence of business domains, business models, brings in another complexity to the banking world. Today, telecom operators are also providing banking services, albeit very basic ones. But, it will be only time that they start behaving and offering what a universal bank will. Consumer retail is another example which is tinkering with offering banking services like payments, etc Then convergence of technology is also happening these days, the technology used for high speed phone networks is being used as a core feature in banking infrastructure. Banks are also increasingly becoming real-time, gradually, reaching a stage where they see other industries being already there.

Consumers whether in banking or otherwise, are increasingly demanding remote channels to transact. This digitisation produces disruptive business models that require swift responses. This also means capturing new revenue streams and optimising these digital channels. And all this is to be done in tandem with proactively managing risk, maximising operational agility and maintaining the margin controls.

All this can be achieved by putting in place a comprehensive Revenue Management & Business Assurance solution. A solution which not allows you to managed and get the best revenues, but also helps you to manage your business risk, maintaining compliance and managing operational risks alike. This solution should be seen as something which will help increase enterprise profitability, promote sustainability and meet the challenges of a demanding business environment.

Revenue Management is a holistic and strategic approach to product management and optimisation of revenue, profit and customer value. It involves accurate, timely and effective pricing of products and services and Omni-channel delivery of customer experience.

It encompasses a set of core business and system processes, from increasing the wallet share through customer retention and loyalty programmes and product cross-selling and up-selling, to capturing of new revenue streams through quick roll-out of product variations and offers.

It is essentially customer centricity – generating and selling personalised offers. An offer with right product at right price through right channel, at the right time, and all at the optimal / right profit margin, thereby, leading to enhanced customer experience leading to better engagement and loyalty.

It also entails using the entire value chain within the customer ecosystem to capture the full possibilities from it. It could be proving flexible settlement structures to facilitate revenue sharing and transfer pricing, or delivering the capability to determine the exact value contribution of the partners.

It is the way to look at offering a package to the customer at an optimised price to meet all his and your requirements at the same time. It is a way to incentivise your customer and drive his behaviour accordingly. Discounts can be given on deposit fees during off-peak hours and this helps you to manage risk and load at the same time. Similarly, interest rate discounts on home loans can be offered based on the relationship of the customer, his total product usage, risk profile, etc. All such offerings, go a long way in driving customer delight and helping you maintain your margins at the same time.

Revenue Management is a way to be customer centric and be inside-out, rather than being outside-in. Offer what the customer needs, instead of selling to him something from outside, which he may or may not need. This approach improves the customer experience extensively and leads to customer stickiness and increased wallet share.

On the same lines, Business Assurance becomes another key component for sustainability, growth and performance. A comprehensive business assurance in a nut shell is management of enterprise wide risk by a comprehensive single customer views, product profitability and potential risks.

Business Assurance is a set of systems and processes to ensure structures, processes, systems for revenue management work together to manage risks, eliminate revenue leakage, maximise margins and deliver analytics to meet regulatory and compliance requirements. It allows data collection at individual transactions, helping to manage compliance to regulatory controls such as anti-money laundering.

It offers the capability for smooth integration of internal external systems, driving complete transparency, leading to operational optimisation and agility to drive informed decision making at all organisational levels. It can also allow managing the margins by allowing threshold pricing to achieve the margin targets.

Such a comprehensive Revenue Management & Business Assurance has to be a part of the strategic plans of the banks and financial institutions to maximise returns in such a complex and demanding environment.

How do banks compete in today’s disruptive environment? (Part 2)

2014-09-04T09:52:00.000+10:00

As banks continue to jostle around for growth and some even for their existence, you may ask, if things are so bad, is there really a way out? Yes, there is definitely a good way to work these out. Well, there are so many banks from around the globe, which have successfully been able to figure out this Holy Grail. But these banks need to start thinking and get going right now.

We spoke about Product Bundling being one of the ways to remain customer centric and generate more revenue per customer and increase customer stickiness. But will the traditional product bundling (only banking products & services) serve the purpose? Will they not become commoditized over a period of time? Yes, they will. However, a point to note is that this concept is still picking up with the banks and financial institutions. They are slowly gravitating towards this. So there is a long way to go. However, what happens next, how do you still innovate and remain customer centric? To find an answer to this, it might be useful to think like a retail super mart – bundle banking products & services with luxury items or services or lifestyle services, like a lounge access or a spa voucher. This aloud, what your target customer would like / prefer / need. Like, for an expat student, it might be beneficial to bundle a checking account with foreign inward remittances and top it up with a mobile sim card. Again, we have to think what our customers want. With changing lifestyles, customers are looking for these lifestyle defining services. It might be a good idea to bundle a credit card with a Formula 1 lounge party access coupons and behave like the Godfather – make him an offer, he can’t refuse. Well, make it enticing enough, for sure.

Today’s customer wants to be recognized for the overall value he brings to the bank – not only in his own capacity to use bank’s products & services, but, also through referrals. He wants to be given due credit (either monetarily or otherwise) for additional customers he brings. Not only this, today banks want to have a system which integrates with the facebook data feed and customer enjoy benefits for any recommendations they give to their friends to use the bank. This is another innovation around customer centricity that banks are planning to target across the globe. And why not, with more than a billion users, facebook is a ready pool of potential customers.

This eventually becomes the story of value chain banking (a step up of supply chain financing, which is a subset of value chain banking). You want to target the complete value chain – whether it is a household or a traditional corporate supply chain or a corporate and its employees. You want to give benefits to the employees of the corporate which has a good relationship with you. You want to allow loyalty points transfer across the household or you want to give some benefits on the mortgage, based on the overall credit card spend the household has. In the SME side of the things, the Director of the SME is a SME customer as well as a High Net Worth customer in his personal capacity. You want to target both of them together and give him some benefits to garner both sides of the business.

These kinds of pricing or loyalty benefits can be used to drive customer behaviour. You want to incentivise the use of a particular channel in which you have invested a lot; you may want to give pricing benefits to the customers who use that channel. Similarly, you want to force your customers not to do transactions during a certain time of the day, say, for fund transfers at branch, you want to desist your customers from performing these transactions during lunch hours, as the load increases considerably during this period. Or you want to charge cheque pickup for interior locations at different rates when compared to near locations. These kinds of pricing innovations to drive customer behaviour become essential to be competitive and remain relevant and creative.

With the widespread advanced mobile technologies, customers have access to everything on their palms 24 X 7, hence, they expect actions in real-time as well. The moment they act, a reaction should happen from the bank. However, traditionally, all bank systems are designed to work in batch mode – end-of-the-day batches typically, and in certain cases, even end-of-the-month ones. Then how as a bank you meet this expectation, becomes another question which needs answer and quickly. This can be addressed with a system which is capable of handling transactions in real-time and dynamically. This can be moving the customer dynamically from one offer or pricing to the other, as his business parameters or expectations or experience changes. All this will be equally complemented by getting all insights on the customer behaviour and transactions in real-time.

There is another way to look at complexity in product offerings at a bank. A savings account is a traditional deposit account and you top it with certain services, you call it Silver Savings Account; you give certain additional services to Silver, you call it a Gold Savings Account and similarly, a Platinum Savings Accounts comes with certain additional benefits and services. And as a bank, you market them as 3 different products. Well, for marketing, this is fine and works well. However, when it comes to systems, where these products lie, it becomes very tough to manage and control. Imagine, what happens when you have 5-7 different variations to each basic product and the total goes beyond 1,000 in a small bank. For the base product processors and core banking systems, it is an operational nightmare to maintain these products. And with the needs of the market, this number is ever increasing by the day. You need an efficient product management system – a system which will house all the variations to all the base products. A system where all the benefits, all service variations and definitions will be stored. This will encapsulate everything from the core systems and make them light and allow them to do what is required of them, to process the transactions. You need product management, which is quick and responsive - speed to delivery / execution becomes critical.

Essentially, in today’s ever changing market dynamics, to compete and grow at the same time, the need of the hour is an “Agile3” Strategy – Agile Systems, Agile Product Management and Agile Processes. All these in tandem will manage the customer experience and help orchestrating it across all delivery channels seamlessly. And this will drive customer centricity, as we say.

This the second and the final part in this series.

How do banks compete in today’s disruptive environment? (Part 1)

2014-08-31T03:10:00.000+10:00

In this changing environment, changing dynamics of the market, how do banks remain competitive and deliver more to their customers? How do they achieve the double targets of keeping their customers happy and at the same time maintain ever increasing revenue and profitability growth. And above all, how do they remain customer centric? These are some critical questions that demand answer, for the banks to be able to define their strategies for their next phase of growth, both organic and inorganic.

Even though customer centricity is the buzzword in the market and being customer centric is the key challenge faced by the banks. However, how many understand what is customer centric? In simple words being customer centric is to do and sell what customers want. Thinking like one’s own customer is being customer centric. In fact, being customer centric is putting customer at the centre of all processes, all products or offerings and even people. Customers have to be the fulcrum of all decision making. Customer centricity is decision making which is outside-in, rather than being inside-out. Bring in the ideas from outside (customers) and then decide. Decide based on what your customers want.

One would ask, what enables customer centricity? Though, one needs to change their operating models, etc to facilitate customer centricity; a highly flexible system capability sitting as middle layer in a typical IT landscape in a bank can easily deliver this capability from systems perspective. This capability can enable right offerings based on what the customer wants. Imagine a right offer orchestration layer which can deliver right offers to the customers across the channels and manage the customer experience at the same time. This enables increase of the wallet share from the customer, based on relevant parameters (profitability, channel, etc).

Many banks still have their products, channels and business lines in silos, or they are partially integrated. This makes their systems product centric, non-integrated as well. Non-integrated systems prevent these banks to have an enterprise-wide, 360 degree view of the customer, which in turn prevents them to be customer centric. This cripples bank-wide efforts to improve customer experience and doesn’t allow them to adequately monitor operational and transactional level activities. These banks need a capability to introduce this flexibility which allows them to have a complete customer view – whether it is a corporate along with its subsidiaries and their complete product holdings, channel utilisation and other transactional metrics, or a husband, his wife and his children all in a single view, contributing as a household.

Such an enterprise-wide view across the value chain will not only allow for better monitoring capabilities, but will generate improved cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. This system will allow you to actually execute such strategies by maximising the customer profitability and improving customer experience and satisfaction manifolds.

In an environment where customer behaviour changes frequently, one needs a system which can capture and manage the changes to the offers dynamically. Similarly, the pricing and other ingredients of the offer should be modified dynamically too. You need a system which allows offer personalisation based on individual customer requirements or requirements across a customer segment. It is a capability which allows more choice and less risk in terms of customer offerings.

Need of the hour is a system which runs on business rules and hence, when the customer requirement changes, customer behaviour changes, the system and hence the bank can deliver a changed experience. You also need a system which offers flexibility to manage new changes as and when such developments happen. A highly flexible and configurable system to orchestrate the changed environment becomes essential to succeed.

It’s a logical understanding that as the number of product holdings per customer increases, average revenue per customer increases considerably and the annual churn of customers reduces drastically. In fact, customer stickiness increases exponentially, as the number of product holdings per customer increases from 1 product to 4 to 5 products. This automatically, increases the total revenues for the bank tremendously. Thus, the product bundling capability becomes a key element for success in a bank. A system which can seamlessly drive dynamic product bundling to cater to ever changing customer requirements will prove to be absolutely necessary.

All the existing and old banks of the world (as I mentioned in my previous post) have many legacy systems, which complicate the situation further. They are typically very obdurate in their approach towards the new systems and enjoy the manual activities from their owners a lot. In such situations, you need a proven system which can work alongside these old systems and let them do what they do best – customer data storage, transaction processing, etc. The new system has to have strong integration capabilities, both real-time and batch.

These old systems bring some more challenges – any new change brings customisation efforts typically running into months together. Imagine a new idea that you want to test out in the market and the change is a good few months and few hundred thousand dollars away, thereby completely eroding any competitive advantage that may have accrued otherwise. Research says more than 70% of the banks take more than 3 months to introduce a new change or a new product offering. In today’s competitive landscape, banks need capability to launch innovative product offerings faster than the competition. You need a system which is highly flexible and parameterised and comes with a complete workflow to manage the processes and acceptance and rejection of the changes. To considerably reduce this time to market, you need a capability which allows very less IT / technical intervention, rather allows the business to try out new innovations all by themselves. Being an innovation leader not only allows you to be disruptive, but it also develops a strong brand value for you.

This post is the first post of the 2 part series to describe ways to address challenges faced by banks today

As a bank, are you being challenged by today’s paradigm?

2014-08-25T14:21:00.000+10:00

The most fundamental challenge for any organisation, as always, is to generate strong revenues and profitability, year on year and strengthen the overall positioning of the organisation. This positioning can be in terms of brand value, brand recall, business league tables, reputation in the market, etc. All this is no mean task in today’s scenario of financial stress, liquidity challenges, increased competition which is both traditional and disruptive and of course the eagle eye of the regulatory authorities. All this becomes even more complicated with the increased data flow across the globe.

Generating good revenues and profits in these turbulent times are one piece of the puzzle. Most of the banks across the globe have ambitious expansion plans, both in their home as well as foreign markets, which they hope to bear fruit sooner than later, especially, once the economic conditions improve. Managing the customer expectations of the merged or acquired entity becomes paramount in such situations. The bank needs to make sure that the customer experience after the merger / acquisition is seamless and the offers are managed in a cohesive fashion. This is the real success of the merger activity, by all means.

Making sure, the operations deliver what is promised to the customers is also becoming more relevant in these times. Supported by better compliance and transparency throughout the customer lifecycle, banks across the world can better manage their operational risk.

Combined with these challenges is the need to remain relevant. And this is the real need to be competitive in this environment and still manage the needs of the customers you are servicing. As the banking industry becomes saturated with products and services and hence, becomes more commoditized, it becomes increasingly difficult for banks to maintain their respective individuality as a service provider. Financial services has always been a competitive business, but banks today have their task cut out, as they differentiate not only with the existing providers, but with the steady trickle of new entrants, who are nimble not only with their processes, but technology wise too.

Customer centricity has been the buzz word in the industry for many years now. However, as the banks strive “to improve the customer experience” and “put customer at the centre of all decision making”, they still struggle make a meaningful impact in being “customer centric”. In the aftermath of financial crisis, banks are finding it tougher to make positive impression on their customers. Differentiating on price and products is becoming increasing difficult and then they face challenges of ever changing customer preferences (which are becoming quite dynamic, by the way) and increasing stringent regulations. Each customer wants to be treated deferentially and be recognised for not only the business they do with the bank, but, for also the business they bring through referrals or introductions or across the value chain.

Even though customers regard the quality of service delivery as a top aspect of their banking experience, they equally value price competitiveness, product innovation, and effective delivery mechanism. The challenge for the banks is manage customer experience holistically in these areas.

You can’t lower the price beyond a certain point, then, how do you still compete? The answer lies in pricing innovation, giving some benefits for the relationship the customer has with you. Being more dynamic and real-time in today’s world is increasing desired by the customers. If the Relationship Manager targets a customer with the same set of products that he has always been offering and which even the competition next door have, then, what is that one story which will allow the RM to get the business and remain relevant? With the ever increasing customer touch points, the delivery mechanisms are more varied and complex. The need of the hour for the banks is to offer more attentive service, integrate multiple delivery channels and make sure the offers made to the customer are consistent across the channels for superior customer experience.

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the most existing and old banks of the world have hundreds of legacy systems, which come with their own challenges. Not that, these so called legacy systems can’t be replaced with the new age ones, they can be, however, such a desire to change, brings with itself a slew of challenges, which can be even monstrous both with planning and execution. Most of these banks have struggled to do so. And the financial strain these replacements bring to the banks, they are better left with maintaining the status quo. The business faces its own perils by living with the status quo, as the new players eat their pie and quite fast at that. The real problem is not the legacy systems by themselves, but the way they were designed and hence, the time-to-market with any new change that is desired to meet the market requirements. Typically, it can run into a 12 months cycle and thus eroding any competitive benefits that might have accrued otherwise.

But the question is – can you live with the legacy systems as is, in today’s market? For sure, not! Most of these legacy systems are typically product centric or account centric. Individual accounts grouped by product type, instead of customer-centric, grouped by customer or segment. These account-centric systems give a fragmented view, thereby restricting capability of the bank to have a holistic & single, 360 degree of the customer – which is essential for cross-sell & up-sell. Lack such capability hampers the bank’s real move towards customer centricity. Even new age CRM systems can’t do this effectively in real-time. Then, wherein lays the solution to the challenges raised by such old systems of the yore? Or for that matter, how to think of going Beyond CRM to implement what a CRM system would typically tell you?

Banks should think of how to develop a capability to be more relevant and responsive to customer needs? What would allow them to reduce their time-to-market? How can they react to competitive pressures more innovatively and timely? How can they be pro-active with their customer offerings? What is the capability that will help them meet their strategic objectives for overall revenue management? What will allow them to match their customer requirements transparently and also meeting all compliance and regulatory requirements at the same time? These are the some of the questions that banks need to ask of themselves to assess how to be truly customer centric.

Mr Advani finally agrees to Gandhinagar

2014-03-21T03:31:00.000+11:00

I as a self professed and a firm believer of BJP and their liberal political agenda is miffed at the way Mr Advani has acted over the past few months. Before going further, let me put in a disclaimer – even though, I like BJP, but that is restricted to their liberal and reform agenda and not at all related to any communal stuff, that many pseudo secular parties claim to be so.

Well, coming back to Mr Advani. I strongly believe, Mr Advani should ideally have left his desires of the PM chair and should have eased into political retirement. Performing a role of an ideologue and patriarch to the core would have better suited him at the age of 86. Not that he is not a known politician across the country. He is well known political face across the length and breadth of the country. He had even served as the Deputy Prime Minister and the Home Minister under Vajpayee NDA government. However, the desire to host the National Flag from the ramparts of the Red Fort one day continues to rage. And this desire is affecting the party and its Mission 272+ for sure.

Mr Advani’s antics are surely hampering the party and its image. His discomfort with Mr Narendra Modi is well known and it even goes to the extent of becoming a butt of all jokes at such a critical time and causes embarrassment. The question is, Is this discomfort only due to his desire to be the PM of India and hence, not liking the idea of Mr Modi being projected the NDA’s PM candidate? To a common man, that is one probable reason that would easily come to fore, as Mr Advani’s desire to be the PM of India is a part of the Indian political folklore.

As a common man with considerable interest in Indian politics (for it affects the country directly and indirectly), I believe, this discomfort also sums from the perceived authoritarian image of Mr Modi. It is widely perceived that Mr Modi will get his way out, some way or the other and hence, can easily cut to size the likes of Mr Advani. Please keep in mind that under the load of 2 successive defeats at the hands of congress in 2000s and especially after Mr Advani paving way for Ms Sushma Swaraj as the Leader of Opposition, after 2009 defeat, he was sort of left in the lurch, may be even demoted to a wise patriarch. Imagine all this after being the face of BJP for decades.

I also feel, Mr Modi’s ever gaining popularity and image as messiah of all development in Gujarat, would have also played into Mr Advani’s mind. His rise as one of the most sought after leader in BJP in all campaigns over the past few years, might also be adding to all this. Add to this the rock star status that Mr Modi has enjoyed for some time. And all hell broke, as they say.

In all this, Mr Advani never ever thought of the party (or maybe he thought), as it looks to a common man and supporter. May be he could have handled it better, by at least not making his displeasure public by resigning from all party posts. And when all was going fine, he did it again; by giving conflicting statements over his choice of seat to fight the General Elections next month. Finally, he agreed to his existing seat Gandhinagar in Mr Modi’s Gujarat.

Ideally, one would have liked Mr Advani to have taken a back seat and accepted the new generation and acted like an elder statesman, guiding the party in these crucial times.

My 2 cents on Mr Kejriwal – he is needed, however, a long way to go...

2014-03-18T13:17:00.000+11:00

Been reading a lot of articles on Arvind Kejriwal and his brand of politics or “anarchy”, as he enjoys it being called! It has been close to around 3 months since he was christened the “7^th Chief Minister of Delhi”, and it has been a more than a year since he became the mascot of “Aam Aadmi” in political fiefdom of our elitist (in his words) political class. While, I strongly believe in the disruption that he brings to the current political mess, however, his projection as being different and an alternate is something questionable, at least to my ilk.

Many political parties including Congress & BJP say that he is no threat to them, however, deep inside, even they would accept his importance and probable threat. I believe, if he has the right intentions and the right means to achieve them, he can create a sea change in how elections are fought and politics is run in general, in our country. My thought process is simple – he is needed to keep a check on the current politicians and political parties, however, to reach where his eyes are set on (read PMship), its a long way to go. I agree, the public in general is fed up with the current dispensation and it needs an overhaul. However, this is a slow process, as no one can overnight do away with the rut that has set in. It will take years – who knows 5, 10 or may even more. But, with the ever growing discontentment in the public at large, lack of patience and generational shift, it will surely be 5-10 years. There is a classic case of BJP in our own backyard, which has grows since the Jan Sangh days in the 60s and 70s to political party ready to take charge once again.

He had a chance to prove his credibility as an administrator and politician for a change, however, he let go off of this golden chance, for want of politics. How much as he may say, his resignation in the guise of Delhi Jan Lokpal Bill was a political stunt. He very well knew that the public mood over the years of poor governance and corruption was completely against Congress and anti-corruption. And with the success in the Delhi Legislative Elections last year, he had the momentum with him along with the emotional bind with the public. So, he wanted to cash in on this mood and momentum and decided to go national overnight and fight the General Elections 2014. This is where the real problem rose – AK was AAP and AAP was AK. There was lack of national faces and this continues to this day. There was and is no national leader who people across the country know and can relate to. And with AK being restricted to Delhi (being the CM), the national ambitions overpowered the fire to perform for Delhi and he resigned. Since he resigned, he has been on a national rally spree, going all around the country to garner votes for himself and his party. Well, this is a no brainer. Agreed! The problem lies with him saying he is different, providing alternate to the 2 national parties. Mr Kejriwal, is no different. He accuses BJP of personality politics in the name of Mr Modi. While, he forgot that AAP and himself are doing the same in the name of Mr Kejriwal.

In all this milieu of Namo and Gujarat Model, Congress, even the small parties, never accused Mr Modi of being corrupt. All they had to say was always centred around Gujarat riots of 2002. No one ever said that Mr Modi was corrupt. However, he came and said that even Mr Modi is corrupt. I do appreciate your bold attitude J In fact, he claims everyone other than AAP members or supporters are corrupt. There is a perception that he thinks bureaucrats and law enforcement agencies are all corrupt. I am not ready to accept that everyone is corrupt. It would be good, if he highlights and segregates the good apples from the bad ones.

It would be good if he rises above referendums (people’s voice, as you prefer to call them). His latest one to get a referendum to decide whether to fight against Mr Modi from Varanasi is bizarre. Come on, is he going to take every decision like this? What to do of cases like Chinese incursions? Take a public referendum, before he gives a firm reply to our neighbours. Voting Lines are open until 9 PM tomorrow. And Chinese scrape additional 10 Kms off our land mass. Additionally, there are many instances to prove that the voice of people is not right always. There is more to politics than the agitational DNA that he and his coterie carry everywhere. He aspires to be the next Prime Minister of India, for which he would have to change his way of thinking and working completely.

Growing aspirations and changing lifestyles in India

2012-11-06T18:52:00.000+11:00

Me and my friend are having lunch at our condo canteen. It is definitely more than a canteen, with nice sofas, tables, chairs, TV and of course sumptuous food J Not to ignore the other condo facilities like the video game stations, table tennis tables, aerobics room, reading room, gym and the swimming pool just besides the canteen. You will ask – why do I need to talk about the amenities here? Well, my simple response to that is, wait to read this post till the end, and am sure, you will be able to relate to this and appreciate what I have written here J

As we both were having lunch, we just talked about various things and points of importance. And suddenly my eyes stuck at a school going kid sitting on a chair nearby with books open in front of him. I just turned around and there is a girl behind me going through her note-book. And thereby started our discussion – how can these people study in public places like this? Isn’t it disturbing? Do these kids not need enough peace to concentrate and study? Surely, there was this peace missing at a public place like this and I am a culprit towards that too. With talking loudly on my cell phone, I was surely adding to a bit of noise pollution in that public space, even though, no one seemed to be bothered much.

Not even a few seconds passed that we both started talking about our past. How we used to study and how it is so different now. I am sure, most of us, would agree, in our days (though more than a decade back now), our parents would always switch off the TV or the radio, if they would see us studying. Or if they have to watch something important on the TV, they would make sure that we leave the room and go in a more silent room to concentrate and study. Even better, at times, I remember, TVs were moved out into other rooms so that both the things can happen in parallel. And if we are studying in our rooms, no one would even come to disturb us, not even our ever fighting and naughty siblings J

In our days, group study was really unheard of. I think, once or twice when we really tried to do so, we had to fight with our parents to allow us to do this. I think, they knew, there is nothing called as group study. And believe me, until a few years back, there wasn’t J I still remember, whatever group works we have done during our school days or college days (especially engineering), all ended up being fun activities J. During our school days, we all wanted to celebrate “Basant Panchmi” – the kite flying festival in India. And on the pretext of tying the knots (“kanne”) for flying kites the next day and of course “group study” as well, we all got together and stayed overnight at a friend’s place. And we all know what group study we did. It was more of group dance and jokes and full on fun timeJ How much I wish even today that we have such group works J

All this was pre 2000, now cut to 2012. We see group studies all around us. You can see one group of kids together at one corner of a coffee shop or a pizza outlet or any of these fast food joints. Is it really worth sitting at these joints, spending some hard earned dollars of your parents at these costly joints? Well, I am no one to be judgemental on this and say yes or no. What I am talking here is why is this happening now when it never happened 10 or more years back.

People might have their own reasons for this. Some might argue that this is western culture killing our Indian culture and what not. Again, I am emphasizing I am not here to criticize any culture or glorify any either. I just want to put my thoughts and discuss this with everyone.

If I have to sum up my reasons for this, I will just say this is because we are getting used to this. This surely becoming our habit now. And from where do these habits come from? These are emanated from the easy availability of such joints. And why do we see big companies investing so much on these joints or our very own Cafe Coffee Day mushrooming across every nook and corner of Urban India? Simple answer to this is – increasing wealth of Indians. And with increasing spending capacity coupled with easy availability of information on new things from across the world we have our growing aspirations. With a lot of international travel these days, we are witness to global lifestyles and with money in hand; we all want to adopt them.

Another important thing to note here is with such an easy availability of these outlets nearby and with nice decor and seating, we end up being there more. It is all about being lured into these outlets and getting used to them. And overtime, it becomes our habit and thereby completing the full circle.

Imagine 2 kids talking to another gang of kids and telling them – we spent quality time at a coffee outlet and what best is they allow us to sit there and study J I am sure this is bound to generate more business for these companies. This is akin to the strategy adopted by Reliance India Mobile way back in early 2000 in India. They made mobile phones so cheaper to own and made consumers into contracting them for 2 years that they were making us all get used to it and make our daily lives revolve around them. And what has happened since then in Indian telecom industry is known to everyone.

From the Steel City - When NIT Rourkela rocked IIT KGP!

2012-10-31T02:38:00.000+11:00

If those moments and that night of winning the Fashion Show at IIT KGP can be recalled and relived forever, the next day was nothing less exciting. It too is etched in my memories for years to come. It’s been 8+ years and I can still recall every moment of those 2 days at IIT KGP when NIT Rourkela was roaring all across the Spring Fest.

The night before was unbelievable. From the underdogs or shameless losers so to say to the flavour of the evening and NIT Rourkela Flag bearer, The Rechargers had lived some of the best moments of their college lives. However, the next day brought something out of the extraordinary.

The day started with a Quiz Competition, which, for the nature of the event, went unnoticed. Not until, NIT Rourkela won the event and the winning team was seen being congratulated and announced loudly and favourably at the Informal stall. With a huge uproar, the whole gang from NIT Rourkela, which was near the Informal stall, started to shout and roar. Another feather in the cap!

As the day went by, many of our college students participated in some informal and formal events and won some of them, much to the cheer of the 300 strong crowd from our college. There were a few teams which participated in the Group Dance Competition too; however, we couldn’t make our mark there. That moment it seemed, the day was about to be over for the NIT Rourkela teams.

However, what happened during the mid-day was something magical. With the start of the Eastern Band Competition, we had hoped to win one more event at IIT KGP and end on a high!

We were all scattered around and suddenly a phone call came, pushing us all to TOAT for the Eastern Band Competition. I reached TOAT to see a handful of our college guys there and suddenly there was everyone calling their friends to TOAT to get as much support for our team. As we were pitied against the local and crowd favourites – IIT KGP Team, we badly needed support for our team and fast.

Within next 15 minutes, what we saw was something extraordinary. TOAT was all filled with NIT Rourkela students and we easily outnumbered the local crowd. I am sure; this would have easily pumped our team to give a performance to remember for a long time.

As our team was called to perform, TOAT now swarmed with NIT Rourkela crowd, echoed with shouts of NIT Rourkela ka Tempo High hai...ooi re mai re mai re mai re Alisha baba ho and the likes. What a proud moment it was. A feeling hard to write and describe! As they say, you need to be in the middle to feel the rush and see what makes it so outstanding! Those Mexican waves, those claps, those dances – all a sight to behold!

And what a performance it was – as our very own singers sang – Har Ghadi badal rahi hai from Kal ho na ho & Dil ne Tumko Chun Liya hai from Jhankar Beats, pure magic and ethereal! The Band members – the drummer, the guitarists, the keyboard player, everyone made a perfect sync – a perfect Jugalbandi! And the way the whole NIT gang supported the team and their performance was noteworthy. By the team, the second song was being sung; I could see the whole crowd humming with our singer and band. There was no discrimination on colleges and teams. Music gelled them all and everyone flowed with the magic that happened there. Everyone was spellbound! Never ever anyone would have expected what happened that afternoon in IIT KGP. What a proud moment for us to have received such a warm appreciation for our team at a foreign turf.

Needless to say, with this mind blowing performance, our college was awarded the best prize and we ended the Spring Fest 2004 at IIT KGP at a High Note! I was just a part of the audience which witnessed the rocking performance, was very much part of it, while it happened, and I just can’t forget those moments – can recall each moment with elan. At times, I wonder, what happens to the members of our Euphony Band which performed on stage that afternoon when the recall those moments of glory, when I feel so proud to have witnessed history being created. I am sure, like many of us, they would be really proud too! J

Indian Politics needs disruptive influence of Kejriwal

2012-10-28T22:58:00.001+11:00

Though, I am not 100% convinced with Mr Kejriwal’s political outfit, however, what I am convinced is that Indian politics surely needs his ways of disruptive politics. He and his coterie have in them to move the Indian political scene up-side down. His idea of bringing out the corruption in Indian politics to the common people is right. He has been right in unmasking the collusive politics and undermining the politico-business nexus. The intent is clearly right.

However, what I strongly believe is wrong with his brand of politics is the ways of doing what he intends to do. I believe, upfront, he is going wrong in leaving his exposes mid way. He exposed the corrupt practices of some politicians and then left them for others to take care. Look at what happened to Mr Vadra and DLF expose – nothing has come out so far and Haryana Government has given him a clean chit. Mr Kejriwal himself accepted yesterday that Mr Vadra will come clean in the Rajasthan Government reports too. I am sure the similar fates are expected for Mr Gadkari and our new External Affairs Minister (Mr Khurshid).

This precisely is the problem. If he intends to expose the corrupt politicians and the corrupt links between the political and business class, then he has to come up with the ways of taking them to a logical conclusion. He needs to make sure that all of his and his party’s efforts are not wasted. If he leaves others (media, opposition parties, etc) to complete the job, then he is fairly wrong here. If you start something, I believe, you need to finish it. He has to remember, Public memory is very short and more so in case of we Indians. This could easily be forgotten.

He at times seems to get caught in his own web of rhetoric. If he has to earn credibility, he needs to take the right steps and that too in right measure. Calling Delhi Chief Minister Ms Dikshit names will not surely take him far. This can prove to be counter-productive. He has to understand that Ms Dikshit has earned her credibility over the years with some good work for the city. If he is pitied against her, the work has to be done slowly and surely.

He can’t get too optimistic with Indian Politics, rather he has to be cautiously optimistic. Indian collusive politics can kill him and his party very easily. The system, for all its flaws, has a strong capability to fight back and discredit anyone. No Magasaysay Award can win back Mr Kejriwal any of his long and hard earned credibility, once he loses it.

India today is a tripartite society – The Haves and The Have-Nots & in between them a raging middle class. The problem right now for IAC and Mr Kejriwal is that all his current support lies within this middle class, which is supporting him in big numbers for now, and on the internet, social media and the likes. It is this middle class, which is also least bothered to vote and will eventually generate less seats for his party. [Even I am to be blamed for this. Being out of India for long, even I haven’t voted and God knows if I will be able to vote in 2014.] The Haves also don’t bother themselves much with Mr Kejriwal and his brand of politics. All the more, because he might expose some of their political connections too and hamper their Net-worth. The poor have-nots are something that Mr Kejriwal has to target. Even though, it will be a difficult task, as he will have to visit places, which normally no one visits. To generate enough credibility amongst these people, he will have to make sure the existing political pressures on them are lifted properly. This is where the political money game is also played luxuriously during the elections. Mr Kejriwal and his team will have to figure out this puzzle too.

Mr Kejriwal has to remain in the game for long and always think of the bigger picture and the longer game. He will have to take small baby steps to create an impact. India is a young country full of impatience. Even though, he has to take some definitive steps, each at a time, he has to understand that the results are needed. He also has to understand that Indian people accept that there is corruption in the country and in Indian politics. Hence, the focus should be how to address that rather than just exposing that.

He has to define a process where this can be addressed. Is Jan Lokpal the only possible way to address this? If yes, then, define the process of getting this done. Similarly, he will have to define how he will bring about the complete autonomy of Public Institutions like CVC, CBI, EC and bring them out of the clutches of corrupt Indian polity. This is something he has talked about for some time now. The time is ripe to lay down the specifics.

As a politician, Mr Kejriwal, needs to articulate his course and vision clearly. They have to announce decisive steps on things that matter the most – economic reforms, counter-terrorism, foreign policy, defence, energy, and many more. He and his team need to think through properly and come out with action plan. This is the best time, there is a momentum in their favour, and however, they need to act fast and incisively, else, this could easily be a chance gone than a chance grabbed.

Good Luck!!

From the Steel City: NIT ka Tempo high hai...

2012-10-28T21:57:00.000+11:00

Having landed at IIT KGP early in the morning, we registered ourselves and got our team registered for the Fashion Show Event. After having got ourselves a place to stay in one of the many hostels at IIT KGP, we went around the campus, just simply enjoying the beautiful scenery and greenery of the IIT campus. We got ourselves something to eat and agreed to meet up at 5 in the evening to participate one more time J

The whole day went enjoying the festival and the events. The business quiz, the sports quiz, the Ad-Mad and the vocals both solo and group enjoyable. The informal stall, hosting various fun events like 1 minute gigs, informal dance shows, jokes, etc were a key attraction. They made the whole fest very interesting and gave people to move away from the tension and anxiety of real competition inside.

It struck 5 in the evening and we all started getting calls from everywhere to gather for the practice session. And as it turned out, half the gang eventually didn’t turn out and we spent the whole day enjoying and roaming here and there.

Late in the evening started with the celebrity night. A 1 hour performance by Neeraj Sridhar and then a rocking 2 hour performance by KK actually made our day. But not before KK sung and along with them the audience sung “Tadap tadap ke...” and made everyone shiver in “Dilli ki sardi...” in Kharagpur. The fantabulous performance enamoured everyone and all ended the day with a happy and singing heart.

We got up next day, little realising that we have a formal practice at the venue on the stage at 12 noon. And yet again, there was a rush to gather the gang at the venue. After numerous phone calls, running helter-skelter for the team, we could finally get the team to come to the Tagore Open Air Theatre (TOAT), which was the actual venue for the main event and our practice as well.

TOAT was the venue to give your performance, a huge open theatre with a big stage on one side with a large T for the so called models J to walk on the ramp. All this surrounded with a seating capacity running into thousands from all the sides.

The team gathered and came to know that ours was the first team for the practice session. Meanwhile, seeing the competition gave us some inferiority complex. All the models (both male and female) were actual models, as we see in the magazines and adsJ. And some of them a notch better too. All around 6 feet height and nicely built with good shapes. And compare this with our team, where the 20 member team had 20 different heights and shapesJ No personal offences, however, the quality of the physical attributes on show in the competition did give us a complex and a scare. I remember, some team members coming to me and saying, “hum to gaye...no chance in front of these guys”. Being a senior member, I had no way but to console them and say...don’t worry, let’s give our best shot J

We gave our trials on stage, finished everything including our final formation and waited to see some of the other teams as well. And what we saw made us more anxious to say the least. Even though, we were confident on one hand that our concept and clothes will pull us through, we were in a state of high inferiority complex at the ramp walk of the competition teams. Their near perfect walk and movement was sure to take a thunder out of our concept and ruin our chances of rocking the competition. And a team member, a junior came and said to me “Gandhi, aaj to gaye...” And yet again, I had nothing else to say, except, “Don’t worry, all will be fine...”J

The anxiety from the practice session, allowed us to sit together and rehearse once again and see what best we can do. And finally we decided to gather around 7 PM near our change room to get ready for the show. We were about to disperse, that a team of fellow NIT Rourkela guys (senior batch) came to me and said...”abe rehne do tum log...tum kahan jeetoge in sab se...See the quality of models they have...leave it...” and continued laughing.

I will not shy away from accepting that we felt more anxious and inferior at these comments. However, what really took the shine away from all the so called beliefs of oneness and one college and support was the fact that these comments came from one of our own. Those thoughts really made that evening very sad for us and the whole team went into a sort of a hiding. Just praying that all goes fine and we could come out with flying colours, if not winning the event.

It was already 7 PM and we all had got together and went into our change rooms to get ready for a final assault, even though, the happenings of past few hours had taken a mental toll on us. The show started, ours was the 6^th out of the 8teams on stage. That gave us some extra time to get ready and do the necessary juggling and make up.

With hearts pounding, we stepped on to the stage...1 and 2 and 3 and I moved towards the center. I was in a group of 3, including 1 girl and as I moved towards the middle of the stage with lights gleaming on me, I was completely taken over by feeling of representing our college in front of a crowd running into thousands and that too at IIT KGP. All the thoughts of the day gone by were gone and taken over by the feeling of pride while I walked across the stage. As I turned right towards the edge of the T ramp, I could hear someone say...”Oye Gandhi aa gaya...” and those feelings are difficult to put in words. It is the moment well remembered, even after more than 8 yearsJ. We finally went into our final formation to a thunderous applause and closed our show with the echoes of “ooi re mai re mai re mai re...alisha baba ho” reverberating TOAT.

We quickly changed and came inside the TOAT to witness the last group on stage. I was surrounded by the whole group with our banner with Rechargers written over it on my shoulder and back. As we were anxiously watching the last group walk down the ramp, a few college mates turned up and congratulated us on the good show and the great concept. Some came to highlight that the final formation was the key and should take us far. While, some mentioned about our attire and took it as our jackpot. They mentioned, we should surely be amongst the top 3. This surely enthused us and was a pleasant change from the day gone by.

A while after the final group had presented, the anchor for the event came with the results. We could see all the teams eagerly awaiting the results with some praying and some just sitting with their heads down to cover up their anxiety.

Just before the anchor was to announce to results, he called up a top model from Kolkata on stage to congratulate the teams and give away the prizes. And he started off, with our heartbeats getting heavy. He announced the winner for the third position as Bengal College of Arts, Kolkata and that team came to the stage. He continued further, that the winner for the second prize is our very own team from IIT KGP. The whole IIT KGP Team rushed to the stage. This announcement made us realise that we stand no chance that even such good teams couldn’t get the ultimate prize. However, as the anchor announced the first prize goes to NIT Rourkela, I don’t have enough words to explain, what happened next. What exactly went though me and my mind and my heart is inexplicable. With a flying banner of Rechargers, I just went running to the stage and along with me the same junior friend of mine who in the afternoon mentioned to me... “Gandhi...aaj to gaye...” Suddenly there was a fight on the stairs to the stage, as to who will get their first J The whole gang was there and that feeling of being on stage as winners of something where we were written off by everyone, is something out of this world. In fact we didn’t give a chance to ourselves too, until we really performed well and everyone liked what we showcased. And finally we shouted hearts out with – “NIT ka Tempo High Hai...ooi re..mai re...mai re...mai re...alisha baba ho”!