From left: Sanjay Tripathy, Senior Executive Vice President—Marketing, Product, Digital and Ecommerce, HDFC Life; Anup Bagchi, CEO & MD, ICICI Securities; Narayan Krishnamurthy, Editor, Outlook Money; Leo Puri, MD, UTI Mutual Fund; A Balasubramanian, CEO, Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund
The power-packed inaugural session set the tone for what was in store for the rest of the day. They acceded to the fact that it was necessary for the management to have a clear digital strategy, and not have a half-hearted approach to adopting it. The speed at which it is being adopted by consumers leaves little room for companies to treat it as just another medium. The shift in consumption of financial services on the digital medium has been mixed—in case of commoditised products and services, the transition has been faster.The fact that the cost of digital products and services is lower than physical alternates is also a driver among many to the digital medium. Leo Puri of UTI AMC spoke about adopting a different digital strategy to address distributor and investor needs.
He detailed how the Swatantra initiative was across media and medium, and how technology could be used to reach out to a wider audience. The hype around digital disruption was squashed by Anoop Bagchi, who shared examples from across the world, where financial institutions were not impacted by digitisation as long as companies kept pace with changes around them. With a significant population being under 35, all agreed that the digital natives had to be treated differently, else it will be irrelevant for them. A Balasubramanian shared his experience of how he had to get his entire top management to undergo a two-day digital workshop to adapt and adopt to changing digital trends. The debate continues on what will work on digital and how much it will contribute to business in the future.
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