How Bajaj Finance is drawing big returns from its well-placed technology bets

Banking and financial services companies have always been at the forefront of technology led disruptions. As the battle intensifies in the Indian financial services space, leading players are looking for innovative ways to outdo competition and lead the race. Bajaj Finance is one such player that is using technology to remain on the winning side, through enhanced customer service and streamlined back-office operations.  

In a highly competitive market, what has kept Bajaj Finance ticking is its ability to launch new products from time to time. In a span of seven years the company has launched 14 products. All these products are supported by technology platforms which provide for end-to-end underwriting workflows along with scalable loan management systems and efficient collections system.

Preparing for the future

The company has been focused on designing systems to address future needs.

Anurag Chottani, Chief IT, Bajaj Finance

“Our systems are designed with high level of end user driven configurable functionality, which allows business to implement a change or add a feature as per changing customer needs (e.g. workflow based loan origination and approval systems),”

------Anurag Chottani, Chief IT, Bajaj Finance. Most of the systems are cloud based, thereby providing the added benefits of scalability, modularity, flexibility and pay-as-use.

In line with changing industry trends, offering innovative products and solutions to customers has been high on priority. Technological features such as virtual accounts, straight through processing and using document imaging are hence being leveraged to ensure effective delivery of the products.

While cost concerns continue to impact the industry at large, Bajaj Finance has opted to deal with it smartly with the use of digitized processes. “We have used IT to digitize processes thereby reducing paperwork and manual interventions, in-turn driving down operating costs and processing times. For e.g. straight through processing is done by digitization of documents for faster processing and reduced costs; customer acquisition, loan management and collections systems are used to reduce operational costs related to the associated processes,” Chottani adds.

As the industry is highly regulated, Financial services companies also have to deal with complex and stringent regulatory requirements. To ensure compliance and smooth functioning of business, Disaster Recovery (DR) data centers have been set-up which ensure business continuity for customer acquisition, loan processing and servicing.

Enhanced Customer Focus

Providing access to multiple channel touch-points is the key to engage with today’s tech savvy customers. Customer information is hence centralized and unified into one 360 degree view. “This unified information is used for presentation to customers when they access any of the channels and also internally within the system by service employees,” reveals the IT chief.

Additionally, Information Security Management Systems (ISMS) are utilized to provide access control, environmental and physical security of data ensuring protection and privacy of customer affiliated information. ISMS has the provision for strong active directory setup along with technology solutions for firewall, intrusion protection systems and end point security solutions that provide a robust security architecture.

Having a unified customer view enables the company to cater to unique needs. This is leveraged on a marketing CRM, using campaign management functionalities, to design product and service offerings in line with customer profiles.

Gaining competitive advantage

“As an organization we have been at the forefront of leveraging new technologies for operating models. Over the last three years we have introduced internet and mobile-based digital self-service models and cloud computing-based anytime, anywhere solutions. We are quick to adopt and offer new regulator introduced payment products, for example IMPS (Immediate Payment Service) is already being offered to our customers,” points out Chottani.