Sujay Parekh

ET Now | My Conversation with LIC CEO on Open Architecture In my interaction with LIC CEO R. Doraiswamy on ET Now, we discussed why open architecture for individual insurance agents has not been included in the Insurance Bill, and what it means for LIC, agents, and customers. Key points from the conversation 👇 • The LIC CEO said the decision is a relief for LIC, but stressed that the larger focus is on customer interest, not just the insurer. • He explained that the life insurance market has a wide range of products, making it challenging for individual agents to fully understand and compare offerings across multiple insurers. • According to him, a single-insurer agency model allows agents to develop deeper product knowledge and provide better advice. • LIC believes this approach helps maintain advisory quality and accountability in insurance distribution. • The LIC CEO pointed out that 92.5% of LIC’s individual new business comes through agents, underlining their critical role. • With a network of 14.7 lakh agents, LIC sees agent-led distribution as a key driver of insurance penetration and employment generation. • At the same time, he acknowledged that the debate around open architecture will continue as the industry evolves. The LIC CEO believes keeping open architecture out of the Bill will help protect customers, improve advisory quality, and support employment—while ensuring stability in insurance distribution. #InsuranceBill #OpenArchitecture #LIC #InsuranceReforms #InsuranceForAll #AgentNetwork #PolicyholdersFirst #FinancialInclusion #ETNow #InsuranceIndustry

83

10 Comments

Any idea of plan to rollout in India the Palm payment systems...?? https://lnkd.in/dqdAKAiT Palm payment systems use biometric technology to enable contactless transactions by scanning unique palm vein patterns or prints. Users register their palm data, linking it to a payment method like a bank account or digital wallet. At checkout, they hover their hand over a near-infrared sensor, which verifies identity and processes the payment in seconds. Major players include: - *Amazon One*: Deployed across 500+ U.S. Whole Foods stores, it uses palm signatures for payments and loyalty programs. Data is encrypted and stored in AWS Cloud.[](https://lnkd.in/dhsQZBiH) - *Visa and Tencent*: Piloting palm payments in Singapore with banks like DBS and UOB, showcased at the Singapore Fintech Festival.[](https://lnkd.in/drcb8RVU) - *J.P. Morgan and Mastercard*: Planning broader rollouts in 2025, with Mastercard integrating palm biometrics into checkout programs.[](https://lnkd.in/deaYTxQJ) *Benefits*: - *Security*: Vein patterns are harder to replicate than fingerprints or facial data.[](https://lnkd.in/d7ErcUkU) - *Convenience*: No need for cards, phones, or PINs.[](https://lnkd.in/da57WE2J) - *Hygiene*: Contactless, reducing germ transmission.[](https://lnkd.in/dkSWUDac) - *Speed*: Transactions take seconds, ideal for high-traffic areas.[](https://lnkd.in/dgj54pZS) #Fintech #NPCI #UPI #Palm #Payments

23

3 Comments

🚀 15 Years of IMPS: The Backbone of India’s Real-Time Payments IMPS turns 15 years of public launch — the platform that quietly built the foundation for India’s real-time payments revolution. Launched as a Mobile No + MMID mobile-only service (Interbank Mobile Payment System), IMPS soon expanded into ATM, internet banking, branch channels, and Account + IFSC transfers — becoming the Immediate Payment Service. A major milestone was enabling BC-assisted transfers and enabling RBI authorised Prepaid Payment Instrument Issues (PPIs), giving migrant workers instant confirmation that funds reached their families. NPCI, RBI and NABARD accelerated adoption by bringing Cooperative Banks and RRBs onboard (directly or via sub-members), even enabling IMPS for banks without mobile banking, using branch-only, and/or outward transers. RBI, Nabard, NPCI, banks and other ecosystem players drove national awareness through banks training, RBI agriculture colleges sessions, conferences, NABARD workshops, educational colleges campaigns, and corporate's training with HUL, Nestlé, LIC, IRCTC and many more. NPCI also launched *99# USSD with banks and telcos — offering IMPS access on feature phones in multiple languages. IMPS even introduced an early merchant pull-payment feature (Mobile No + MMID + OTP), which was later discontinued to allow full focus on UPI’s merchant ecosystem. Today, 960+ banks and RBI authorised PPIs process 400+ million IMPS transactions every month — powered by IMPS’s unmatched security, reliability, and high-value capability. IMPS also powers beneficiary name enquiry, widely used by corporates, NBFCs, insurers, MFs, fintechs, and even NEFT and RTGS for real-time account-name validation. I’m proud to have been part of this journey — from enabling a ₹7 tea payment outside RBI, BKC, to celebrating IMPS’s first 1 million monthly transactions, monitored live by the entire NPCI team. From ISO8583 roots to the modern XML-based UPI framework, IMPS remains one of India’s most secure, resilient, and globally respected digital public infrastructures. #IMPS15Years #IMPS #DigitalIndia #RealTimePayments #NPCI #RBI #NABARD #FintechIndia #UPI #SecurePayments #HighValuePayments #FinancialInclusion #BCNetwork #99StarHash #USSD #CooperativeBanks #RRBs #IndiaStack #DigitalPublicInfrastructure #PaymentsInnovation #BankingTech #NPCI #RBI #NABARD

211

8 Comments

💭 Large Ticket Corporate Funding – A Double-Edged Sword? In many high-value corporate lending cases, banks extend facilities of ₹50 crore, ₹100 crore or more… But often with only 25%–40% security coverage — and sometimes no tangible collateral at all. So why do we do it? ✅ The Positives: • Strong business cashflows & ratings offer comfort • Large corporates bring in NTB (new-to-bank) value • High-value clients open doors to cross-sell (trade, treasury, salary accounts, etc.) • Relationships with marquee names boost the bank’s brand equity But the risks are equally real. ❌ The Risks: • A sudden industry downturn or regulatory action can erode repayment ability overnight • With low security coverage, recovery becomes extremely difficult • The moment it slips to NPA, it hits provisioning, profits — and more painfully, the banker’s own career KPIs 📉 Once it becomes NPA: • Provisioning eats up bank profits • Credit cost surges • Resolution may take years — or end in haircuts • The RM / Credit officer / Sanctioning authority may face internal scrutiny This is why risk appetite must be balanced with credit discipline. In the chase for large-ticket growth, let’s not lose sight of prudence. At the end of the day, it’s public money we’re lending. And trust, once lost — is hard to recover. Let’s lend big — but lend wise. #CorporateLending #BankingRisks #NPAs #CreditManagement #LargeTicketLoans #RiskVsReward #BankersLife #PublicMoneyMatters #LinkedInBankingThoughts #CreditDiscipline #SecureLending #BankingEthics

11

2 Comments

Latest NVIDIA report on State of AI in Financial Services: 2025 Trends. Do we see any AI use cases in context to Indian BFSI ecosystem missing here?? Link to the full report in comments. #GenAI #AIusescases #AIinBFSI

33

2 Comments

Attended online Fraud and prevention summit by Truecaller. Some of the existing challenges of Banks / NBFCs is to identify the phone number at the time of on-boarding, this is serious and just an OTP is not enough to validate... Another interesting thing which we all discussed was, are Banks/ NBFCs provisioning adequately for online frauds as they are pressing the pedal of automation and IT enabled journey for seamless on-boarding? Think about it..

227

6 Comments

Dr. Bharat Madan’s weekend post on the “ghibli trend” got me thinking. This phenomenon has literally melted GPUs worldwide, even prompting Sam Altman to plead “please chill” so his team could rest! While novelty drives user curiosity until the next trend emerges, the underlying concept fascinates me. AI has been democratized to the point where anyone with prompt-writing skills can call themselves artists, researchers, or authors.🤳 Scaling requires manufacturing and distribution, among other things. AI has achieved this with nearly a million “AI-driven” apps across various platforms. We’ve seen this story before with textiles, chocolates, watches, ceramics, and countless other industries. Yet people still pay premiums for hand-crafted pottery or artisanal chocolate. 💰 New technologies emerge, but history’s pattern remains consistent - automation 🤖scales, while craftsmanship maintains its unique value.👨🏻‍🎨 P.S: I like my photo better than the ghibli illustration 😉 #AI #Technology #DigitalTransformation #Craftsmanship

61

10 Comments

BankNbfc.com has commenced its first International office at Dubai to build the Global Fintech AI. R Shankar - Chartered Banker, Independent Director, Advisor Vijay Rajagopalan Timmana Gouda D J C Thirumurugan Sriram Kalyanaraman Rtn.Dr.(Hon) Ish Anand Vishwanath Seshadri GEORGE THOMAS Dr. Christopher Arvinth Vaidyanathan V

11

2 Comments

RBI’s Digital Lending Directions 2025: A Step Towards Ethical, Transparent and Scalable Fintech:- The landscape of digital lending is evolving fast. With the RBI's latest Digital Lending Directions 2025, the ecosystem is being reshaped to bring sharper clarity, stronger borrower protections, and uncompromising transparency in fund flow, data privacy, and platform accountability. Over the last few days, I have studied the shift from the 2022 guidelines and compiled a practitioner-friendly compliance framework that breaks down the following: 1. What is new 2. What is mandatory 3. What is operationally complex 4. How institutions can stay audit ready without breaking agility From KFS restructuring to granular consent handling, from LSP governance to DLA accountability, this is not just about regulatory checklists. It is about rebuilding digital lending with trust, clarity, and long term sustainability at the core. I have shared the complete breakdown and a downloadable comparison table in this post. Would be keen to learn how others in the ecosystem are approaching their compliance and tech alignment for this directive. #RBI #DigitalLending #Fintech #Compliance #RiskManagement #NBFC #RegTech #DataGovernance #LendingInnovation

32

2 Comments

The RBI September Bulletin featured an interesting article on the customer experience of fintech apps. It presented a fascinating analysis based on 4.67 million user reviews from 107 apps spanning payments, lending, and banking sectors. User feedback is quite polarized, with about 67% of reviews giving apps 5 stars (very positive) and around 20% giving 1 star (very negative), reflecting strong emotions on both ends. From my experience running a lending app, this rings true—most customers who get approved tend to leave positive reviews, while those who don’t either avoid rating or leave low scores. Lending apps also see over half of their complaints related to loan processing delays, credit limit issues, and discrepancies in credit reports. Payment apps, on the other hand, face frequent criticism around app crashes, transaction failures, login problems, and customer service responsiveness, largely due to the high volume transactional nature of their business. Banking tech apps report significant challenges with customer support, app stability, and technical glitches affecting services like KYC and account management. The report also highlights that apps with larger user bases, regular updates, and clear privacy policies tend to receive more positive feedback. Users appreciate apps that continuously improve and respect their data. Conversely, apps that collect excessive data but fail to deliver good service tend to lose favor. For fintech companies, this is a clear call to action: prioritize responsive customer service, ensure seamless app performance, and maintain transparency around data privacy. Focusing on these areas will build trust and loyalty, ultimately resulting in higher retention and higher customer life time value. #fintech #digitallending #RBI

28

2 Comments

Every NBFC has numbers. Every NBFC has ratios, charts, and a well-designed deck. But that’s not what builds a resilient lending organisation. The real story of an NBFC lies in things 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐞𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐰. A few weeks back, I was with our team in a semi-urban belt. One of our officers was meeting a borrower who had fallen behind on two EMIs. On paper, the account looked risky - classic “red box.” But the moment we walked into his small workshop, the picture changed. Tools neatly arranged. Raw material stacked with care. A single bulb hanging over an unfinished order… and the man still trying to complete it. He wasn’t running from repayment. He was running from a bad season. When he spoke, there was no excuse-making. Just honesty: “𝘚𝘪𝘳, 𝘵𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘩𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦 𝘬𝘢 𝘬𝘢𝘢𝘮 𝘳𝘶𝘬 𝘨𝘢𝘺𝘢 𝘵𝘩𝘢… 𝘱𝘢𝘳 𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘤𝘩𝘩𝘰𝘥𝘶𝘯𝘨𝘢 𝘯𝘢𝘩𝘪. 𝘈𝘢𝘱𝘬𝘢 𝘣𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘰𝘴𝘢 𝘵𝘰𝘰𝘵𝘯𝘦 𝘯𝘢𝘩𝘪 𝘥𝘶𝘯𝘨𝘢.” You will never find that sentence in any financial model. But this is what decides who pays back and who doesn’t. A strong NBFC doesn’t rely only on numbers. It relies on 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐱𝐭 -the quiet signals you notice only when you visit the borrower’s world: – The cracked hands of a worker who still shows up every day – The shop that opens on time even when business is slow – The daughter’s school books kept wrapped in plastic to save them from dust – The pride in repaying, not the fear of default Investors often ask, “How do you manage credit quality?” I wish they could travel with us for just one field day. They would see why we say: 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐝. 𝐁𝐞𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧. Numbers alone cannot capture honesty. And honesty, in our markets, is still the strongest collateral. We are not chasing fast capital. We are building an institution that understands the difference between a borrower who won’t pay and a borrower who can’t pay right now. There is a world of difference. It changes how you lend, how you collect, and how you sleep at night. For us, maturity means one thing: 𝐍𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐧𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐮𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞. That is the part no balance sheet will ever reflect. But that is the part that builds the balance sheet. 𝐈𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮’𝐯𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐲 𝐛𝐞𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐧𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐬, 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐦𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐰-𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞 𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐞. #LendingWithContext #NBFCInsights #BehaviourOverBalanceSheet #PatientCapitalThinking #RealCreditUnderstanding

58

2 Comments