2021 is the year of bank and FinTech Collaboration: MD and CEO of Equitas small finance bank

Forum of Industry and Academic Knowledge Sharing (FIAKS), a global knowledge-sharing platform comprising of more than 5000 C-suite executives from Banking, Fintech, Payment, and E-Commerce, held its annual leadership conclave virtually, with discussions on the topic "Digital Transformation: Look before you leap".

The webinar deep dived into the existing financial services ecosystem, which has evolved to a state where traditional financial institutions and FinTechs - which once have been vying for the mind share and wallet share of end consumers - will now have to work more closely in an effort to innovate.

In attendance were leaders from the financial sector, mainly comprising C-suite executives, professionals from Non-Banking Finance Compes, besides students and members from the media community.

PN Vasudevan, MD and CEO Equitas Bank - one of the panelists - highlighted that FinTechs have grown into technology front-end compes acquiring customers and maintaining a relationship with them. On the other hand, banks have just become a back-office in that space, providing the new settlement platform for completing a transaction.

"2021 would be the year of Bank-FinTech collaboration, while FinTechs are coming up with ideas very relevant for a bank to look at. If banks want to be relevant, they should not just become a back-end service provider taking a basic cut from transactions or revenues," said PN Vasudevan.

"Banks should invest in the front-end and proactively work with FinTech to leverage all the benefits they can bring to the table. FinTechs should reach out to the banks as much as they are reaching out to the PEs and VCs for strategic investment," he added.

Other industry veterans who participated in the panel discussion included Ram Gopal - CEO of Barclay Bank India, Anubrata Biswas - MD & CEO of Airtel Payments Bank, Man KVS - Whole Time Director at Kotak Mahindra Bank, and Sujatha Mohan - Sr. Director FIS Payments at APMEA. The discussions were moderated by Vikas R Panditrao, Co-founder of FIAKS.

"Fintech has already altered the market in the last decade. However, key aspects that will push the need for partnership is Fintech's dynamism and the banking sector's traditional experience. The collaboration between the two will bring the best of both worlds to offer unique products to a larger number of people in India, particularly the underserved rural segment," said Ketan Doshi, MD of PayPoint India, expressed his views on Fintech-Bank collaboration driving future policies.

PayPoint India is a last-mile distributor of financial services with a network of more than 48,000 tech-enabled physical outlets in India. The company was co-sponsor of the event.

FIAKS (Forum of industry Academic Knowledge sharing platform) is a unique P2P cross border knowledge sharing platform consisting of 750 plus CEO/CXO bankers, 500 plus Fintech professionals, 400+ unique brands, 300 plus CXO cooperative Bankers, 200 plus PSU/RRB banks, 100 plus Founders/Co-Founders spread across 30 plus countries.

FIAKS is a social impact knowledge sharing initiative based on the concept of sharing economy. Uber, Ola, co-working spaces are based on sharing economy. Here the founders have applied the concept of sharing economy in the knowledge space. And it's emerging as a unique 1st of its kind CEO/CXO skilling and re-skilling platform in the world. Complex activity of policy advocacy happening is such simple way using social messaging app and networking site.

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( With inputs from ANI )