K Satyanarayana Raju, Managing Director and CEO of Canara Bank, said that the bank is investing heavily to augment its technology for cost control and offer robust services to its customers.
Speaking to Siddharth Zarabi, Managing Editor of Business Today Television, after a steller Q4 performance by the PSU lender Raju said that three years back the bank was not in sync regarding technology but now the lender is at par in terms of upgradation and deployment.
“Whatever we invested, we brought new initiatives in the bank with the help of internal talent only. We generally take vendor support in taking the platforms but the product design everything is done by the internal talent only. We don’t have any advisory concept in our bank,” he said.
The CEO said that the bank has enough systems to groom its internal talent and is confident of its quality.
He also highlighted an example of this confidence. “One example I can say that when we launched our app Canara ai1. It has the highest rating among all the apps from the Indian public sector banks. This was indigenous and it was developed by the in-house talent. We created a 40-people pool.”
Raju also said that the bank is going to hire over 200 people in this financial year as it focuses on specialised functions like data analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning and data center-level maintenance.
“We have got permission from the board to recruit on a contract basis at a market price, 204 people that we are going to recruit in the current financial year to fill assignment-based gaps. We will focus on developing, nurturing and making them ready for future responsibilities. We strongly believe in the ability of our human resources,” he added.
The bank’s focus on hiring and technology assumes significance as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently penalised financial institutions like Kotak Mahindra Bank, Bank of Baroda, Paytm Payments Bank and others over failure to adhere to digital regulations.
There have been restrictions imposed on carrying out recovery or repossession activity, onboarding new customers on mobile applications, and the disbursal of loans under specific lending products.
In the case of Kotak Mahindra Bank, the RBI barred it from onboarding new customers through online and mobile banking channels. The regulator also directed the bank to stop issuing new credit cards. The regulator highlighted the absence of a robust IT infrastructure and IT Risk Management framework behind its step. The lender announced the hiring of 400 people to bolster its IT infrastructure shortly after this directive.
In October 2023, the banking regulator directed BoB to suspend further onboarding of customers onto the ‘BoB World’ mobile application, citing ‘certain supervisory concerns’. RBI revised its decision on May 8 and allowed it to onboard customers through the app.
On January 31, the RBI imposed major business restrictions on Paytm Payments Bank citing major irregularities in regulatory compliance for years.
State-owned lender, Canara Bank on May 8 reported an 18.4 percent rise in its net profit to Rs 3,757.23 crore in the fourth quarter of the financial year 2023-24. On a sequential basis, net profit rose 2.8 percent.
The net profit of the bank rose on the back of better asset quality and an increase in net interest income in the reporting quarter.
In the reporting quarter, the gross non-performing asset (NPA) ratio of the bank improved to 4.23 percent, as against 4.39 percent in a quarter-ago period, and 5.35 percent in a year-ago period.
Read More: Investing heavily to augment technology: K Satyanarayana Raju, CEO, Canara Bank