State of mobility in Indian financial services

State of mobility in Indian financial services and why industry is bullish on mobility

By Purushottam Darshankar

In India, financial institutions, especially commercial banks such as ICICI, HDFC have long been early adaptors of mobile technology. Early on, they adapted mobile SMS (short message service) messages and short code services, but recently have been quick to integrate line of business applications into their operations.
ICICI Bank, India’s second largest bank has launched iMobile, a mobile banking platform on mobile phones. iMobile facilitates internet banking transactions on mobiles phones. Customers can now transfer funds to ICICI and Non ICICI Bank accounts just with the click of their mobile. The application covers Savings bank, Demat, Credit Card and Loan accounts. Customers can also pay their utility bills and insurance premium through this facility.
Mobile banking is generally a extension of a bank’s online banking web presence that provides a unique opportunity to user to use their device as banking instruments. However mobile payments and mobile wallet are far more sophisticated and requires many additional components to be successful. In Mobile payment and mobile wallet they act as your credit card or cash. The mobile wallet is combination of NFC (Near field communication) and data services that creates additional services for consumers.
Japan is the only country in world which has well adapted to mobile banking system with 30 million handsets equipped with NFC capabilities. India has long way to go and financial institutes need to build a trust in Indian consumers.
The insurance world in India is dramatically different with lot of new players emerging and insurance agents are centered on serving customers who have damaged properties or experience the automobile accidents. The key differentiator for insurance company is the relationship with customer and how well the insurer services their customers. In India insurance industry has been considered as laggard in area of mobility and other emerging technologies. The reason is mainly due to storage of insurance information housed in legacy systems known as dreaded mainframe.The tools used in their day-to-day life in insurance industry have been paper forms, pen, and cameras. However, mobile device are capable of combining all those manual functions into one converged solution that has online and offline capability. The user can still be able manage his day-to-day functions at accident sites that do not fall under network coverage area. The data captures in electronic format can be synchronized with back end system once the network coverage is available. Not only it allows the insurance company to quickly settle claims but eliminates the paper based processing so common in industry today. The claim adjuster can process claims an average of six times faster than when using traditional paper based processing system.