Kotak Bank selected CRMNEXT’s digital self-service platform for enabling bankwide digital transformation

Kotak Bank selected CRMNEXT’s digital self-service platform for enabling bankwide digital transformation

March 30, 2021

Kotak Mahindra Bank Limited, headquartered in India, is a private sector bank offering products and financial services for corporate and retail customers in personal finance, life insurance, investment banking, and wealth management. The bank wanted to carry out a bank-wide digital transformation process and reached out to CRMNEXT as their solution was the best fit for the bank. Kotak bank implemented CUSTOMERNEXT (digital self-service platform) to meet their objective of bank-wide digital transformation.

Implementation Process

The scope of the project was to integrate Private Cloud Digital Platform for customer acquisition and onboarding across business lines including Credit Cards, Insta PL, Fast Track OD, Working Capital, Current Account, Business Loan, MSME Loans, Home Loan, Business Loan, Loan against Property and Working Capital, CASA. Combined Customer point verification, Document Verification Unit, Risk Control Unit, Customer communications, Biometric Authentications, Inventory, and deliverables. The implementation was carried out bank-wide. The team responsible for this implementation were CRMNEXT Engagement Services and Kotak Bank Business Solutions Group, IT team, and LOB teams.

In terms of scalable complexity, more than 13,000 users, over 1,600 branches, ~80% of the workforce penetration, and more than 60 million customers managed on the platform. The integration complexity also includes high data synchronisation volume and limitations of existing systems with more than 200 integration touchpoints. The project required digitising processes across all product lines to deliver touchless digital onboarding, instant loan processing, combined customer point verification and document verification unit, and risk control unit, and offer a single unified strategy execution platform to launch innovative products faster go to market execution.

Some of the best practices during the implementation process are highlighted below.

Under process simplification, to avoid over process automation, identify current process pain areas, to stress the importance of process over UX
Under integration practices, to check for service readiness, and identification of touchpoints
As part of the data strategy, the importance of data consolidation and data aggregation
Under scope management, emphasis on timely sign-off and to respect baselined requirements during implementation
Under the reporting requirements, to avoid computational and analytical reports in CRM6
As part of the purity of vision, the need for system boundary, store vs retrieve, and alignment with the product
Under CRM Governance, the importance of core team formation, proactive planning, and stakeholder management
Non-functional needs include baseline security, baseline purging and archival, and scalability testing
To build releases under development, SIT, UAT, staging/pre-production, production, and CCB
Under configuration updates releases, there should not be any direct change in production, to block IDs, the addition of product b. tools

Kotak’s program governance rests on three pillars which are highlighted below.

Core team formation – The project’s core organisation that comprises of team members and stakeholders as per specific program needs
Proactive planning – The bank undertakes proactive planning of project requirement gathering and strategy execution to ensure every stage is aligned to the bank’s customer business goals
Stakeholder management – Bank actively engages with stakeholders to keep them apprised of desired outcomes. The bank helps them understand issues and needed changes, provide advice and assessment of potential impact, and make necessary adjustments.

To ensure that CRMNEXT projects are aligned to the bank’s customer business goals, timely deliveries, the bank follows the governance framework:

infrastructure – cloud development instance setup by customer, pre-prod environment across the release, access for Dev & UAT (Access for Customer Team and CRMNEXT team)
Design governance – receipt of visual designs for journeys, agreement and sign off on Master Data Sheet/Services Specs for Integration, detailed processes flow for Vivid/CRMNEXT, detailing of validations and error conditions
IT Governance – mutually agreed Sprint scope and duration, Sprint Plan based on Dates for providing Sample & Actual Services, development to be based on sample services/APIs, API and services to be available before SIT Code Drop
Release Governance – release plan to production once a month for enhancements/ defects, defined scope of the monthly release, weekly release meetings to resolve dependencies and conflicts, SIT & UAT dates to be derived based on receipt dates of actual services/API, retro-fitment of Codebase with UAT/production
Testing governance – comprises of unit test cases and automated testing

Benefits Achieved

CRMNEXT solution offered instant customer onboarding with video eKYC, 13 million new leads processed in the past 6 months, ~400% increase in CASA leads, ~20% increase in home loan disbursements, and ~300% increase in leads for credit cards. Customers can start the instant account opening journey from any channel (website, social, email, SMS, ATM, net banking, and mobile banking and instantly get an account number with instant funding options. The solution also benefited the bank with faster loan fulfilment with digital journeys, ₹11,000 crores disbursed through a new digital platform, instant loan application generation for a home loan, business loan, loan against Property and Working Capital from 2 to 3 days earlier, touchless digital onboarding for the secured credit card, instant personal loan, fast track OD, working capital, current accounts, business loan, MSME loans, instant loan processing for Home loan, Business loan, Loan against Property and Working Capital.

Around 700% of QOQ increase in Fixed Deposits amount, 45% increase in lead conversion rates, 40% reduction in average sales turnaround time, intelligent customer 360-degree view that includes real-time static, transactional and analytical information with seamless integration with core and multiple banking systems. The system delivered integrated and actionable intelligence through over 180 integration touchpoints from various sources. Moreover, AI-driven prequalified offer management through algorithmic techniques such as frequency scoring and whitespace analysis with the Trinity Cross-Sell Modeler.

Conclusion

CRMNEXT powered Kotak Bank with anchors of stability and growth driver in the pandemic induced crises by empowering the bank with a smart digital platform across all its channels and lines of businesses.

Key Facts