Mangaluru, Apr 1: Mahabaleshwara MS, Managing Director & CEO of Mangaluru headquartered private sector lender Karnataka Bank on Thursday said Karnataka Bank is at the cusp of engineering a breakthrough in the Banking industry as the ground has already been laid to be the ‘Digital Bank of the Future.
Addressing the staff members at the branches and offices across the country on Thursday through virtual mode, he said even before the COVID-19 outbreak, Indian Banking Industry had been undergoing a paradigm shift from the traditional ways of Banking with digital technology powering this change in all aspects of Banking. The advent of payment banks and fintech lenders has accelerated this change.
He said that the Karnataka Bank is one of the first Banks to Acknowledge, Accept and Adopt this change and took a proactive step as early as 2017 by initiating a holistic transformation journey – ‘Project KBL VIKAAS’. The objective of this journey, founded on digital technology as an enabler, is to strengthen the Bank’s fundamentals and build long-term capabilities to continue to stay ahead of the curve. Establishing a state-of-the-art Digital Centre of Excellence (DCoE) in Bengaluru has been the most important outcome of this project. DCoE is now the digital innovation hub of the Bank powering the launch of various digital products harnessing the latest cutting-edge digital technology in the industry. Bank has already launched digital loan sanctions for most of its retail loan products. The introduction of Tab Banking and Web Banking for opening SB a/cs are the recent successes of this center.
He said that as the digital is the way forward, we have placed digital banking on fast forward mode to pursue the concept of ‘KBL NxT’. With many more digital products lined up for this new financial year under this new setup, Karnataka Bank has a business advantage heading into the new FY 21-22 in a post-COVID-19 scenario and it is my appeal to each one of you to rise to the occasion. Further, the CASA share of the Bank has reached a new high of 31% and the digital transactions have also crossed 90%. For the new financial year, the Bank has planned to grow its business at a moderate 12% to take the total business turnover to Rs. 142500 crores. With healthy business growth, ‘cost lite’ liability portfolio, strengthened fundamentals, etc. the year 2021-22 should be a ‘Year of Excellence’ for Karnataka Bank.”, he added(UNI)