FINTECH: The Gamechanger - All India Management Association - www.sourajitaiyer.wordpress.com/

VOLUME56ISSUE6JUNE2017indianmanagementFINTECHININDIA
JUNE 2017 VO L U M E 5 6 I S S U E 6 PAG E S 9 2 r 6 0
GROWTH
DRIVERS AND
OPPORTUNITIES
SECURITY
CHALLENGES
ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE
IN FINTECH
ARE TRADITIONAL
BANKS UNDER
PRESSURE?
FINTECH
RESHAPING
INDIA’S
FINANCIAL
LANDSCAPE

18 I N D I A N M A N A G E M E N T J U N E 2 0 1 7
Thegame
changerFintech companies should understand the gaps in existing services/products and design their offerings
to bridge these gaps. This alone will ensure tangible, long-term impact.
SOURAJIT AIYER, FLYING WITH THE WINGED ELEPHANT

I N D I A N M A N A G E M E N T J U N E 2 0 1 7 19
COVER
STORY
T
he next time you visit
Disneyland in Orlando, you
may notice folks wearing
a wristband. It is not a
fashion accessory; rather it
is a technology innovation
involving finance, operations,
and logistics.The wristband operates as your
mobile wallet to pay for your rides in the
amusement park, thus more convenient than
carrying cash and cards in a crowded place and
risk being pickpocketed. It operates as your entry
ticket, helping you avoid long queues; as your
hotel room key if you are staying in one of the
hotels in the park, ensuring you do not carry the
physical key and risk losing it; and as a location
finder for your children, in case they get lost
in the crowd. Similar examples of innovation
abound today, where technology is combining
finance, operations, and marketing to provide a
unique client experience, more convenience, and
reduced waiting time, all at a lower cost.This
helps businesses garner repeat visits and referrals
in a hyper-competitive environment.
What is fintech all about?
While the Disneyland example combined
technology with finance, operations, and
logistics, fintech is specifically the confluence of
technology and finance, wherein technology is
leveraged to provide a convenient, faster, holistic,
and cheaper access to the financial product or
service. Fintech initiatives may be from new
startups focusing on one or more pieces from
the offering’s value chain, or it may also be from
traditional financial services companies trying
to transform their business model across the
value chain.While the impetus to fintech started
to reduce costs, it has now moved to improve
revenues.The focus on costs meant innovations
in processes and efficiencies, while that on
revenue meant innovations in access, channels,
and partnerships.
It is all about algorithms
Fintech innovation boils down to algorithms
using business data in an intelligent manner, be
it through data analytics, business intelligence,
machine learning, simulations, or artificial
intelligence.This requires mapping of processes
so that the reactions are set as per the possible
scenarios that may occur when the innovation
connects people and business.These algorithms
replicate human processes on a technology
interface, thus enabling the access of the
service to those who were not able to receive
it physically before, at a cost they did not enjoy

engine as the first step for any fintech innovation.
This is one of the reasons why the biggest
successes in the fintech space have come from
startups rather than from veteran financial
services companies; the legacy data problems
of these companies have proved to be a huge
challenge.Also, many financial services businesses
believe that technology can just be added to
their existing business model if they have to do
a fintech innovation.That does not really work,
as many struggling managers will point out.
Innovation in fintech involves an entire overhaul
of the business model, to ensure all the pieces of
the jigsaw fit together. Else, the innovation will
always be a misfit either in terms of integration
of data across multiple platforms or in terms
of structuring the sequence of responses to the
client’s enquiry on the interface.
Change in mindset
Older companies have had to undergo a tough
process of changing their mindsets with respect
to technology investments.This is because they
have grown with the mindset that finance is
ultimately a people-driven business, and hence
investments involve talent.That outlook is
changing in the fintech age since finance is now a
technology-driven business. Hence, investments
in technology are becoming more crucial than
those in talent.Yes, people still remain important,
but the kind of people needed is changing. Many
older companies in the industry have been slow
to recognise and accept this; hence investments
into necessary resources have been inadequate.
However, while their expectations from their
workforce of ensuring a revival in the changing
environment remain high, the workforce
struggles to meet those expectations without the
correct resources.That is leading to a disgruntled
workforce and attrition in many Indian financial
companies, ultimately causing discontinuity or
delays in the innovation processes.Without the
right resources, the lifespan of such companies
will be as good as doomed. In short, a lot
©Shutterstock.com
earlier, and with a unique user
experience. It may not always
mean a single algorithm for
the entire interface, rather a
series of different algorithms
based on the possible scenarios.
These algorithms have to speak
to each other without errors,
helping actionate the client’s
instructions with minimal
human intervention.They also have to interface
with external data feeders seamlessly since most
fintech innovations depend a lot on dynamic
external data.The algorithms determine how
the work gets done, and how everything will
operate. Forming and continually updating these
algorithms is the core of any fintech innovation.
Resources invested to create algorithms
Innovation will only be as good as the algorithms
that go behind it, which in turn, will only be as
good as the structure and cleanliness of back-end
data and quality of the data processing methods.
The truth is that most Indian companies have
outdated methods for maintaining business data.
Data is not always accurate and not available
in the format required to marry data from
across multiple systems on a single warehousing
platform—essential to build a data analytics
Many financial services
businesses believe that
technology can just be
added to their existing
business model if they have
to do a fintech innovation.

depends on the quality of resources
being invested in.
Identifying critical components
from the value chain of services
Most have seen how unbundling of
services is occurring in the airlines
business, with a number of services
added separately during the booking
process, all adding to the ultimate fare paid. In
a similar manner, fintech has unbundled some
components from the service value chain.Today,
one sees specialist startup vendors in the market
who provide the best service for one need in
the value chain, while another provides the best
service for another need.An example is of a firm
which helps in lead generation, while another
helps in product suggestion, and yet another in
reporting.Very few firms in the fintech space
offer a holistic suite of services that encompass
the entire value chain.This is another area that
companies innovating in fintech have realised, and
one reason why old companies have struggled to
deliver fast and nimble innovations. It is very rare
that all the components in the value chain can be
reorganised by the company inhouse. It may need
to use external vendors on certain components,
FINTECH
while driving certain critical components
inhouse to protect the knowledge. For this, one
has to identify the components in the value chain,
disaggregate them, and rearrange them as per
their criticality.
Where is fintech making an impact?
In terms of specific financial services segments,
fintech is making an impact on payments and
transfers, savings and investments, loan-raising
and protection segments.While fintech solutions
have made an impact, big or small, on all these
segments, its continuing impact on the segments
apart from payments and transfers is debatable.
Payment and transfers
It was impossible to miss the plethora of mobile
and online payment interfaces that hit the market
in recent months. Even before demonetisation
occurred, the combined user base of the three
largest mobile wallet applications in India
was 13% of the country’s population. Post
demonetisation, this must have increased leaps
and bounds.This is one segment where probably
the most number of platforms have launched
shop, across both startups and platforms of
banking or telecom companies. Of course, a
Very few firms in
the fintech space
offer a holistic suite
of services that
encompass the entire
value chain.
©Shutterstock.com

number of discount marketing
schemes in this segment have
also ruined, or will ruin, many
private equity/venture capital
investments; but that is
another discussion. The
convenience offered by these
platforms helped migrate many cash-only
customers to cashless.The security features on
these platforms, some of which rank amongst the
best in the world, has given clients the comfort to
use these platforms even for critical transactions.
Not only mobile wallets, but even small tasks like
bills payment through online payment channels
have seen new service providers entering the
market. Given the discount-based marketing
dominating this channel, a consolidation among
industry players is only to be expected, and it
may not be too long before some of the new
startups providing a niche value-add offering
is acquired by one of the larger companies that
wants to extend its suite of offerings.Those who
cannot offer a niche value-add may face death
eventually because there is a limit to which
investors will bleed; unless the segment turns
profitable soon. But since the price point of
services is already low in most cases, it is more
a battle for volume of users. Hence, the firm
with most users will survive. One might also see
a case of predatory pricing in this segment to
accelerate the process of consolidation, just like it
is occurring in the telecom space presently—an
industry giant is pricing out all the competitors
with rock-bottom tariffs just because it has deep
pockets to do so, and eventually recover these
losses after the competitors exit.
Savings and investments
This is an area where fintech initiatives face
maximum challenges. Recognising the low
penetration of financial products in India,
automated financial advisory platforms came up,
most of whom work on the same principle—they
make a rough risk profile of users, capture their
age and return expectations, and suggest a bunch
of mutual funds to meet that need.All well so
far? Good for the user, good for the platform, and
good for the mutual fund? However, a number of
such automated advisory platforms are struggling,
unable to notch up the base number of users
needed for it to earn a ROI. If Indians were
really in need of proper savings and investment
mechanism and the present penetration of
products was so low, this should ideally have been
a cash-cow opportunity. But no, the reality has
proved otherwise.This is because most of these
platforms did not address the basic reasons why
financial savings is still low in the country:
 Lack of investor awareness and education
 Ability to suggest the correct product as per
their situation rather than just a basic risk
profile
 Perception about financial instruments due to
market uncertainties
 Making people aware why they are becoming
net poorer in a high inflation nation like India
if they just invest in fixed income products
 Difference between buying earnings vs.
buying market when it comes to selecting
securities
 Fallacies of investing in real estate in a post-
demonetised India
Given the discount-based
marketing dominating this
channel, a consolidation
among industry players is
only to be expected.
©Shutterstock.com

 Selecting the right product
considering investment surplus
and need
All these still require
human touch and the need
for intermediation, and that
is why pure, automated
solutions that enable the client
to buy a financial product or
service are proving ineffective
in the current context.When it comes to
money management, people still want a second
opinion—they want the comfort of human
interaction. Once the platforms can replicate
this, perhaps their effectiveness will also improve.
While all the platforms have some sort of
gamification and scenario-building, wherein
users can see how much corpus they need to
build in the future for a certain need, the input
of expected returns has to be filled by the user.
In reality, the average user in India is financially
illiterate to even understand what an expected
return should be in a specific scenario, let alone
identify the correct return. I have made accounts
in most of the financial advisory platforms in
India just to see the user experience and what
they involve, and this feedback is based on pure
primary research. Only one Hyderabad-based
financial planning company proved to have a level
of holistic information collection, encompassing
assets, liabilities, incomes, expenses, expectations
and plans, following which a certified financial
planner actually sits, chalks out, and discusses
that plan with the user explaining all the whys
and wherefores.This means the ideal solution
is a hybrid of automated interface and human
intervention in India, rather than a pure,
automated interface. Perhaps once India becomes
more financially mature, a pure automated
interface can succeed for savings and investments
need. But we are still a generation away.
Apart from automated financial advisory
platforms, even payment platforms are
integrating a savings angle by offering their users
access to a liquid mutual fund or gold product
if they want to park their surplus in a higher-
yield avenue, instead of just storing it in balance
with the payment wallet where it does not
yield anything. However, since the orientation
of payment wallets is still to make people buy
and buy more, it is in their interest that people
do not park their money in longer duration
securities. But that goes against the orientation
of savings and investments since the wealth from
investments is made over the long term, not
short term. Perhaps, payment wallets should
seriously look to integrate longer-term savings
products in their system by negotiating the
commissions accordingly.This will go a long way
towards transforming the savings and investment
segment to a larger base of captive users in a
more practical and impactful manner.
Loan-raising
Crowdsourcing to raise loan funds has emerged
as a fast-growing financial service in the
developed world, though it is yet to pick up in
India.These platforms make use of social profiling
of client data to estimate the credit worthiness
of the customer, apart from actual documents.
It indicates that one has to be careful about what
one comments or posts on social media, since
that may be considered to represent the complete
Payment wallets should
seriously look to integrate
longer-term savings
products in their system
by negotiating the
commissions accordingly.
©Shutterstock.com
FINTECH

you.This is actually debatable,
and one can question how
effective social media profiling
can be for estimating credit
worthiness, but it is happening.
This type of P2P lending
(peer-to-peer lending) has
its own risks, which the business model of the
innovation solution has to take cognizance of. In
the loan business, it is easier to lend money than
to recover it. So how does one ensure the money
is returned in a technology-enabled automated
world raises a lot of eyebrows.As of now, this
may not be a segment that will see effective
uptick in a country like ours, unless the systems
and processes ensure the exact checks and
balances. If it picks up without that, the lender
will bear the entire risk.
Protection
Insurance protection is a segment least
understood and hence the need for human advice
and consultation exists.Whether automated
fintech solutions can further the case for
insurance segment remains debatable. Perhaps
the ideal solution in the current context will be
the hybrid one, where pieces of the value chain
that can be hived off and automated to lower
the costs are done so, while the pieces that still
need human intervention to maximise the impact
remains the way it was.Users have to understand
that insurance and investments are dishes best
served separately.The fintech innovations in this
segment have to build accordingly, if they really
want to make a long-term impact.
How is fintech making an impact?
Fintech is more relevant to the activities involved
in a financial service offering than specific
financial services segments. Fintech solutions
have made an impact on all the activities
mentioned below although its continuing impact
on the buying action remains debatable.
Lead generation and client acquisition
In an industry where there are no barriers to
entry and was marked by hyper-competition,
there was a dire need for institutionalised
support for lead generation so that the flow of
new clients continued. Specialised agencies have
emerged in the fintech space that helps with
online lead generation to tap a growing chunk
of the device-savvy millennial generation.This
is either through keyword strategies and SEO,
or client referral programmes with portals, or
tie-ups. Many Indian financial companies have
tied-up SEO/SEM support, digital marketing,
and adword management. Some companies
have set up separate teams to manage the online
lead generation initiatives.This also includes
operational improvements to quicken the
acquisition and onboarding process, be it through
auto-populating of client data from various
platforms. Not only does this help productivity,
it also helps ensure the client’s experience is
smooth from the start. Fintech initiatives have
also included gamification of products/services
as per scenarios, to convince the customer about
buying them.An example being a tool that
Fintech is more relevant to
the activities involved in a
financial service offering
than specific financial
services segments.
©Shutterstock.com

depicts how availing a better financial planning
service now can help them live a better life post
retirement.
Client profiling and engagement
In an industry where multiple sources of data
exist and each of these sources generate billions
of data every day, client profiling has become
an industry in itself.Today’s age is all about B2I,
rather than B2B or B2C. B2I means‘business to
individual’, which means a level of customisation
far ahead than has ever been envisaged in the
industry. This not only involves handling of
structured data, but also unstructured data in
various formats.These have to be aligned to tell
a story about the client, so that companies can
serve a customised offering. Big data methods
analyse all the data, including the
clients’ past purchases, to arrive
at the optimal customisation
that will attract their attention.
It tracks the cookies on their
device to ascertain their online
footprints. Based on the exact
profile, the strategy has to be
formed to ensure the client is
gainfully engaged. Profiling is not
only critical to identify whom to
contact, but also to identify whom not to contact.
Most companies cannot afford negative affiliation,
hence the need for profiling. Engagement also
includes identifying what people with similar
profiles or inputs have demanded.That helps
build more relevance when the client is exploring
the interface.
Buying decision
In this segment too, automated financial advisory
platforms are trying to capture the opportunity
of the low penetration of financial savings
products. While most fintech solutions are
helping clients do the background work behind
a financial decision, be it information gathering
or servicing, the migration of the client to make
the final buying transaction is still a struggle
in most cases. Payment platforms still have it
easy, since they sole thrive on the consumer
spending habits of customers. However, most
of the other financial services segments do not
really thrive on the consumer spending habits,
rather on the other aspect, i.e. the saving habits
of India. Unfortunately, the savings habit of most
Indians has dipped in recent years, given that
the gross savings rate in India has declined to
30-31% of GDP. Even within that, the savings
is largely concentrated if one goes by the data.
This indicates the broader Indian population is
not really saving; rather they are spending most
of what they earn.This intensifies the challenge
for financial platforms trying to mobilise regular
inflows from clients into financial products.
Product promotion and comparison
How many times have you felt overwhelmed
by the flood of suitable products in the market
and were unable to choose the right product
finally? Fintech innovations have brought out
interactive tools to help make better comparisons
on crucial parameters. It helps advertise the
benefits of that product to the client, instead of
just advertising the product.The filter system
eventually helps the customer narrow down to
a few shortlisted options. Insurance and mutual
fund comparisons are the best examples, wherein
a number of platforms have helped disseminate
the information in a more targeted way, simply
because the client can pick and choose how he
wants to view that information. Often, these
include instructional text or videos, or scenario
tools, which provide more clarity.
Reporting and servicing
Reporting is mostly an administrative function,
where the need for cost-saving has forced
many companies to think of technology-based
solutions. Fintech innovations today provide
ways to make a simple static portfolio statement
more interactive and dynamic. It converts the
Automated financial
advisory platforms are
trying to capture the
opportunity of the low
penetration of financial
savings products.
FINTECH

typical two-pager portfolio
statement into a more engaging
interface, with links to relevant
securities if clients want to
know more about them, or red
alerts beside securities if the
they have to actionate anything
on them. Servicing has also
leveraged technology solutions,
either through chatbots or
automated voice call centres. Not only does this
help save operational costs, but also ensures that
the actual human executive is called only for
pressing queries.
Why is fintech making an impact?
Technology-based solutions in financial products
and services have helped both companies and
customers. It is giving them holistic choice
and access to the financial product or service,
and assisting them in various ways to take the
decision. People may still need the human
intervention for critical aspects, but much of
the value chain is now covered through fintech
solutions in a seamless manner.
It is helping companies offer additional and
existing services at a lower operating cost and.
increase revenues by bringing more clients into
the fold. It also aids businesses garner repeat
visits and referrals from clients in a hyper-
competitive environment. Repeat visits and
referrals are crucial today because the battle for
market share has become primary, while that
for market size has become secondary. Frequent
disruptions to business models means the average
life of a product in the market is shorter.The
time a product has to hit the market, grab the
buyer’s attention, and make enough sales is
reducing. Many products may not even reach
break-even before evolutions necessitate moving
on to the next big idea. In short, many product
segments may not even offer the scope to capture
its potential market size, before an innovation
changes the very market altogether. It is all one
can do to maximise the market share in that
short duration. So while organic client addition
will continue to be in focus, repeat visits and
referrals from existing clients are a quicker and
cheaper method to build market share.The cost
of acquisition of an existing customer is typically
less than that of a new customer. In a noisy
market with numerous companies advertising
numerous benefits for numerous products,
customers now often rely on known people for
unbiased advice. Moreover, the proliferation of
discount-marketing schemes means customer
loyalty is zero. So market share is all the more
crucial, and fintech solutions are helping achieve
that objective.
In conclusion, we are living in interesting times
indeed.While the business scenario remains
tough and competitive, the fintech revolution has
also given the opportunity to drive more business
competitively. It has brought out the innovation
and enterprising quotient of many middle-class
Indians, as they have seeded several fintech
solutions. Firms who are adaptable and nimble
to change and willing to make appropriate
investments in the right resources can gain in the
fintech age.The rest will soon die!
Repeat visits and referrals
are crucial today because
the battle for market share
has become primary, while
that for market size has
become secondary.
©Shutterstock.com
FINTECH
Sourajit Aiyer
is an author, and
has worked with
financial companies
in Mumbai, London,
Delhi, and Dhaka.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

FINTECH: The Gamechanger - All India Management Association - www.sourajitaiyer.wordpress.com/

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