Guest Lecture On Fintech / Financial Technologies By Dr Amarendra Sahoo, Ex Regional Director RBI

A guest lecture was organized by the Finance Department, Institute of Management, Christ University, Lavasa on 7th February 2020 from 2.30 pm to 4.30 pm on FinTech / Financial Technologies at CIML, Management Block. The resource person was Dr Amarendra Sahoo, Chairman Atom Technologies Ltd and former Chief General Manager and Regional Director of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Dr Amarendra Sahoo, till recently Professor at SRM University-AP, has been a consultant with many companies. He has been Belpay India Managing Director, headquartered at Brussels dealing with Business-to-Business Payments and comprehensive solutions to risk management. and Vice President Cambridge Global Partners, an international strategy and business consultancy on risk management. He was formerly a consultant with HCL Infosystem, World Bank, Washington DC, and visiting Professor, City University of New York.

Dr Sahoo was a veteran central banker with over three decades’ experience in public policy in India and abroad. He was Chief General Manager and Regional Director of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Dean Academics and Professor Finance, IMT Ghaziabad, Secretary General Apparel Export Promotion Council, Gurgaon. Dr Sahoo holds a PhD in Economics from IIT, Masters from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, USA (as RBI Golden Jubilee Scholar). Dr Sahoo specializes in BankTech, EmergeTech and Financial markets.

A primer to Fintech-emerging scenario and opportunities was given to finance specialization students by Dr Amarendra Sahoo by Ex Regl Director, RBI with specific reference to digital payments leading towards a less cash India. At the outset he spoke about the immense scope of digitalization. He mentioned that India’s digital payment has been tipped to grow to a large extent as huge investment in Fintech will contribute to the country's GDP. The distinguished professor further added that CHRIST University’s proposed 3-month certificate program in FinTech and Digital Banking (powered by Atom Technologies) offers a unique opportunity to ride the Fintech wave of innovations.

He elaborated the relevance of FinTech or Financial Technologies and mentioned that banks; the only avenue to financial transactions have been called to question its importance. He gave detailed information about India’s digital background and elaborated on FinTech products such as Peer to Peer (P2P) lending platforms e.g. Faircent, Chillr, Crowd Funding- solicitation of small amount from multiple investors through web-based platform, social networking eg. Milap, Blockchain (digital ledger, called blocks, which are linked) and Distributed Ledgers (database consensually shared and synchronized across network spread across multiple institutions or geographies). He also spoke about Big Data (reveal patterns, trends of human behavior as banks are not fully using their CBS data for refining products/ Services), FinTech products and services, Robo advisors with minimal human intervention, mathematical rules or algorithms and E-aggregators (Ecommerce that does not produce or warehouses any item) aggregates information on goods, services from competing sources at its website).

The students were informed that these are used in international scenario, which bring together the lenders and borrowers, seekers and providers of information. Dr Amarendra further gave valuable information about credit, payments and digitization of money. He rightly informed finance students that credit is mostly given by banks, NBFCs and other financial institutions. He further added that the existing P2Ps, which were not within regulation, are being brought under regulation in India through NBFC route. He spoke about RTGS, NEFT of RBI and several other payment systems of NPCI, wallets and similar products and services which have semblance of digitization of money are well understood and regulated. The students came to know about cryptocurrencies – other than Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDCs) which are mostly unrecognized as they are still on drawing boards and nascent state.

The students learnt that blockchain is more discussed and debated than deployed. In this context Dr Amarendra explained that banks should understand underlying blockchain technology and how its impact could positively reshape their existing services to improve customer experiences. He categorically stated that ironically, if bitcoin is allowed to grow to its fullest potential, banks could have access to new markets on an unparalleled scale.

It was quite informative to know the basic difference between cconventional IT and FinTech in banks. At this juncture he asserted that innovation in the BFSI space will ride on three pillars - BlockChain, AI, IoT which will keep track of every transaction. With the advent of technology finance sector is also undergoing tremendous change. It was interesting to observe that voice enabled financial services makes banking relatively 'invisible’.

According to Dr Amarendra FinTech allows banks to better screen borrowers and set interest rates that better predict ex-post loan performances, Eco survey proposed GSTN like, called PSBN (PSB Network), to monitor borrowers and develop AI-ML ratings models for corporates.  He also explained how better credit underwriting would reduce the NPAs, fraud prevention, operating costs would decrease by automate end-to-end process of lending, and reduce turn-around times (TAT). Dr Amarendra Sahoo, Ex Regional Director RBI proceeded to give detailed information about cryptocurrency, blockchains, bitcoin, IoT (Internet of Things) and much more.

It was quite enlightening to know factors which can differentiate IoT and AI such as cloud computing, scalability, cost and learning from data. For instance, IoT generates huge quantities of statistics, and cloud computing gives a pathway for this data to tour. In all the entire guest lecture was extremely informative and the students asked some pertinent questions which were aptly answered by Dr Sahoo. The students were convinced that the need of the hour is to go digital as this is the age of digitalization. He also spoke about digital payments through IMPS (Immediate Payment Service), UPI (Unified Payment Interface) and BHIM (Bharat Interface For Money). The guest lecture was coordinated by Dr Ambuj Gupta.