New Frontiers at Banking Frontiers

Having covered the banking sector in this magazine for over 7 years, and having organized seminars, conferences and roundtables for 5 years, time was ripe for us to start some new activity. And that new activity is research surveys. From time to time, we will come to you with a set of questions and based on your responses, will present you the analysis.
On an experimental note, we started off on a mini survey on corporate banking, with only 7 respondents. The full analysis of the survey will be presented later, but here I will share with you some interesting responses from the participants. On the training front, it emerges that it is not product knowledge, nor technology knowhow, but simply soft skills that is the most critical training need for front office staff. On the back office side, it was a combination of core banking knowhow and credit appraisal skills that demanded maximum training. As regards internal database, the customer database turns outto be the most important database. For external source of information, the most critical are varied including websites of RBI, NABARD, Ministry of Finance, etc.
In terms of outsourcing various activities, the key drivers are cost reduction, improved productivity and volume variation.
Common drivers cited by corporate bankers for growing
the volume of business include improved processes,
improved technology and more business intelligence.
Common drivers for improving profits was primarily better products. For both volume and profit growth, adding more people was seen as the least appropriate solution.
All in all, the survey shows that corporate
banking continues to be a complex business where change comes in slowly. Seems that process, products and technology are the areas where maximum changes are in the pipeline.
We will share with you a proper analysis once we have inputs from a larger number of participants in this survey. Do let us know what survey topic are of interest to you.
CORRIGENDUM
There was a typographic error in the news on page 45 in the July issue. The name of ED of Syndicate Bank, R Ramachandran was mentioned as R Ramanathan. The error is regretted.