| |June 201919CIOReviewservice quality e) quality of life for the front-line staff ensuring better work-life balance. In terms of technology, NBFC-MFIs will further augment the usage of Mobility, Analytics and Cloud services. Machine Learning component has been introduced into such organizations which have been able to demonstrate faster adoption to advancement in technology.To elaborate some of it in detail, NBFC-MFIs so far have treated all borrowers in a largely uniform manner. On interest rates, what it means is that a very disciplined borrower, even with a long credit history, will get loans at the same rate as a not-so-disciplined borrower, who has been irregular ­ either wilfully or forced by circumstances. Hence, in a way, uniform pricing subsidises sub-standard credit behaviour of few by unfairly charging the good credit behaviour of most. It has continued thus so far owing to its inherent simplicity where treating good and not-so-good customers differently will be costly and difficult. With the power of technology at our disposal, it shouldn't remain so for long and creating a more enabling regime to incentivise responsible credit behaviour can be witnessed soon.Similarly, on the products feature, uniform products are available for all the borrowers of a company, which remain very limited in range. For one, the financials products have continued to be largely credit-only with some basic insurance ones in partnerships with insurance companies. Even players in the space of Banks and Small Finance Banks (SFBs) have not been able to deepen the product offerings on savings/ deposit/ credit side for microfinance customer base. For loans, parameters like loan amount available for a given number of years' association of a borrower with the NBFC-MFIs, loan tenure, repayment frequency etc. are same for all the borrowers. Against a largely agrarian economy with lumpy cash-flows, which affects almost all economic activities at the bottom of the pyramid to exhibit strong seasonality, microfinance credit has remained highly structured by way of equated weekly/ fortnightly/ monthly loan repayments. Limited experimentations and innovation have happened in the backdrop of regulatory pricing regulations, which are certainly not enough. Technology has demonstrated huge potential to understand individual borrowers at granular levels which should help companies enhance the bouquet of financial services significantly.Ensuring client protection and high quality of customer service are other important pillars of the industry, more so because of the vulnerable socio-economic profile of borrowers. It remains important that all necessary information on a product is given to a prospective customer enabling her to compare multiple service providers and making informed decisions. To this effect, robust information dissemination, diligence of field officers and adherence to processes are important. Finally, savings on time and effort to service a client should translate to better work-life balance of the field officers who work in highly demanding conditions, almost 12-14 hours a day, 6 days a week. Technology has substantial role to play in all the above.While regulator and ecosystem players are ensuring a rapid evolution of IT regime in the industry, there are ways which may propel it further. It is important to realize that IT capability may soon emerge to be the most significant base of competitive advantage in an otherwise very crowded market-place. Neeraj Kumar Lal
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