Next Challenge For Banks: The Fine Balance Between Physical And Digital

From teaching children the concept of saving small amounts and seeing it grow to inspiring trust among the vast majority of individuals, especially senior citizens, with guaranteed returns from deposits, to holding borrowers’ hands in their times of need, banking has had a major role to play in the financial lives of individuals. The banking industry has lived up to its expectations and has been a pathbreaker when it comes to customer interface and convenience by embracing the digital domain. It has adopted new forms of business while maintaining its primary role of accepting deposits and lending. Bank deposits were among the few investments that Indians made in the 1990s and early 2000s. That was also the time when banks gave handsome returns on deposits—fixed deposits (FDs) gave up to 10-11 per cent in the late 1990s and even higher in the early ’90s over longer...