E-Financial Inclusion is critical to make the financial inclusion viable and sustainable for banks in India. For only leveraging technology can help the banks to create opportunities out of five key challenges in this regard i.e. cost, coverage, convenience, confidence and convergence.

Deputy Governor Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Harun Rashid Khan said this here at SKICC, during the Banclave on “e-financial inclusion – way forward”, which was organized by the Bankers' Club, J&K.  

J&K Bank Chairman & CEO Mushtaq Ahmad, who is also Chief Patron Bankers' Club, was also present on the occasion along with Regional Director (J&K) D Sethy who is also President of the club.

CGM-in-Charge DIT RBI S Ganesh Kumar, CEO National Payments Corporation of India (NCPI) A P Hota, Regional Directors (RBI) P K Jena, Nirmal Chand,  CGMs SBI K M Trivedi, Anil Kishora, CGM (NABARD) Vijay Kumar, Head Non-Linear Sales TCS Ajay Shrivastava, J&K Bank Executive Presidents, Presidents and Vice-Presidents, Head Financial Inclusion (PNB) B M Padha besides senior officers from various banks operating in the state attended the Banclave.

Giving a panoramic view of the financial inclusion along with its problems and possibilities in the country’s evolving economic scenario, Deputy Governor said, “Financial inclusion must become a springboard for economic activity to make the accounts remunerative for banks, which naturally makes its qualitative dimensions more important than the mere increase in number of accounts.”

“The issues to deliberate on are like how to use technology for agricultural finance, and how technology can be leveraged for risk mitigation since creating large number of such accounts needs proper controls and supervision”, he said.

He urged the participants to come out with some action-points at the end of their deliberations so that at least contours of digital plan for J&K emerges besides suggesting what role can RBI play in terms of connectivity and co-ordination.

“Communication and commitment are very important elements in this and for that the banks need to equip and train their staff well to take this mission forward. And I hope that  the bankers' forum like this one will play a catalytic role in the development of banking system within the state of J&K”, he added.

Speaking in his inaugural address earlier, Chief Patron Bankers' Club Mushtaq Ahmad pitched for the substance of inclusive paradigm rather than its mere symbolism.
He said, “The sections at the grass-root of society must feel assured of care and inclusion and for that to happen Make-in-India slogan has to be wedded with the Made-for-India mantra.”

“The day we are able to integrate our societies not only in financial sense of inclusion but in social and digital sense as well, we shall rub shoulders with the best nations in the world”, he added.

“For around 30 percent of our population don’t have the purchasing power and all the schemes rolled out by the government of India must focus at pushing this demand curve up”, he said.

He also took the audience through the evolution of financial-inclusion since late 60’s before the term achieved its current meaning and significance.  

Earlier, President Bankers' Club J&K D Sethy welcomed the participants and briefed the audience about the eminent speakers who have been working on financial inclusion and its allied processes.  

On the occasion, CGM S Ganesh Kumar gave a power-point presentation on ‘Innovation in IT for better governance’.

Differing from the general view about the use of technology by people as a challenge he said, “Based on my experience in the field, I find that people do use technology in times of need and our role as bankers is to make them conscious of their need only.”

 “In order to reap benefits of fast evolving technology platforms and remain relevant, the banks need to engage in serious business process engineering to adapt the new business models otherwise computerization is just the mechanization of manual banking processes. And from branch to branchless banking, we are moving towards virtual banking where even banks may not be needed any more”, he added.

A P Hota, who heads NPCI, which is an umbrella organization for all retail payments system in India, gave a detailed overview of payment system dimension of the financial inclusion.
He particularly talked about the role of JAM Trinity i.e. Jan Dhan, Aadhar and Mobile.

He said, “Prime Minister’s Jan Dhan Yojna generated such momentum in financial inclusion which brought regulators, bankers, government and community in unprecedented way. Accessibility to the formal financial system has expanded to a large extent and a whopping Rs 30,000 Cr have been mobilized so far.”

“Aadhar - a Unique Identification Number wherein bio-metric identity is converted into a number, has already crossed one billion mark”, he added.

“Due to its ever-growing numbers, mobile device can be the single most powerful tool for finance and banking. But for that to happen all the banks need to get the mobile numbers of all the customers linked to their bank accounts”, he said.

J&K Bank Executive President S S Sehgal concluded the pre-lunch part of Banclave with the vote of thanks.

After the lunch, there were two technical sessions.

First session discussed ‘Leveraging Technology for Financial Inclusion – State Experiences' and was moderated by DGM (RBI) D K Kashyap wherein J&K Bank Executive President Vagish Chander participated along with P K Jena, Nirmal Chand, K M Trivedi, Vijay Kumar and Ajay Shrivastava.

The second session was on ‘e-Financial Inclusion, e-Payments, e- Governance in J&K – Way Forward' moderated by GM, RBI, S C Sharma wherein A P Hota, Anil Kishora, B M Padha, Rajkamal Vardhrajan (HDFC) and Vikas Bhauwala (ICICI) participated.