As digital adoption accelerates in India’s financial sector, the risk of fraud and regulatory scrutiny is pushing financial institutions to rethink their technology priorities. For many, the next frontier is not just scale but also compliance, digital identity and security.
Amid this, Mumbai-based financial services firm Choice International has digitised its operations across over 100 branches and 20,000 partners, while laying the foundation for stronger compliance through event-driven architecture and AI-enabled governance.
“The biggest challenge in fintech today is fraud. I believe compliance technology will have the most significant impact on reshaping consumer behaviour in finance,” said Yogesh Jadhav, Group CTO, Choice International, in an interview with TechObserver.in’s Mohd Ujaley.
Edited Excerpts:
How did you approach driving digital transformation at Choice, especially given the company’s large branch network and dedicated tech team working to digitise products?
The focus has always been on building trust and confidence through open communication with all stakeholders. As you said, we have a large branch network and a tech team working to digitise our products.
When we first started digitising, there was a gap between what the ground RMs (relationship managers) needed and what was being built by tech. This created some friction, as RMs had to change the way they had always worked, which led to resistance, escalations and some roadblocks.
We realised the solution was to involve stakeholders from day one. Whenever we introduce a new feature, such as SSO, we conduct alpha and beta testing with branch members so they understand what we are trying to achieve. Branches then act as a bridge to customers.
This has allowed our physical network to feel included in the digital journey, instead of it being seen as something run independently from Mumbai. Our approach is simple: we work for you, with you and for your customers.
Many financial institutions today are adopting hybrid models, where digital-first and offline-assisted channels coexist. How do you ensure consistency in user experience and data accuracy across both online and offline platforms?
At Choice, we built a single interface for all our RMs and partners. Previously, different back offices, trading platforms and other systems all had separate logins and provided different data.
As you rightly said, the challenge was keeping data in sync and maintaining accuracy. The management gave a clear mandate, we will always operate in a hybrid model and our strength is the branch network.
So, as we digitised customer journeys, we also created a consolidated interface for branches and RMs. This provided a single customer view across our multiple financial services — equities, mutual funds, insurance and more — despite the complexity of multiple entities and compliance requirements.
By role and access, every RM can now see all the necessary customer data in one place.
Digital transformation is not only about technology but also about people. How have you managed change within teams and ensured alignment between business, technology and branch stakeholders?
Change management has been one of the most crucial parts of our journey. When we started digitising, many relationship managers saw it as a threat, they feared customers would bypass them if everything became digital.
Our approach was to treat branches and RMs as partners, not just channels. We involved them early, gave them access to beta versions of products, and asked for feedback before rolling out at scale. This made them co-owners of the transformation.
On the technology side, we invested in internal training and adopted processes like CI/CD with AI-assisted code review to ensure our 250+ member team could maintain quality at scale. On the business side, we ensured that every product was positioned as an enabler of RM productivity rather than a replacement.
By aligning incentives and involving stakeholders throughout, we were able to reduce resistance and create a culture where digital is seen as an extension of Choice’s personal, branch-led model, not a competitor to it.
Fintech is evolving quickly, with conversations around AI, blockchain and decentralisation. As a technologist, how do you decide which emerging technologies are worth investing in?
Technology keeps evolving, from programming languages like C, Java and PHP to newer ones like Go and Rust, or from traditional architectures to cloud and AI.
Our approach is always problem-first. We ask: what is the user problem we are solving? For example, in a hybrid structure, the challenge was syncing offline and online data. Traditionally this was solved through ETL processes, but as we scaled to over 100 branches and 20,000 partners, this became a bottleneck.
So, we adopted an event-driven architecture, instead of pulling data through APIs, we now push events across systems, which allows near real-time updates. We only adopted this once we had the right problem where it was the right solution.
Similarly, in our trading platform we faced performance bottlenecks with third-party APIs. To solve this, we considered rewriting certain components in faster languages like Rust or C.
With AI, our challenge was consistency and quality across over 250 member tech team. We now use AI in CI/CD pipelines to evaluate code against organisational standards, which helps scale quality control.
On the other hand, technologies like blockchain are often hyped. Unless there is a real problem it can solve — for example, reducing compliance risks in KYC — we do not adopt it.
Looking ahead, what technologies do you believe will most significantly reshape how people invest or manage their wealth in the coming years?
The biggest challenge in fintech today is fraud. From UPI to digital banking, frauds are becoming more sophisticated. Even my own father avoids online banking because of fear. Many young people, including team members, have lost money.
This is pushing regulators to tighten compliance requirements. I believe compliance technology will have the most significant impact on reshaping consumer behaviour in finance.
For example, KYC today requires entities like us to maintain documents for seven years. This is a huge risk and cost. But imagine a blockchain-based system where the government maintains verified KYC certificates. As a financial service provider, I would only store a certificate of verification, not sensitive documents.
This would reduce risks for consumers, lower compliance costs for companies and improve security across the industry. I expect such changes in compliance, digital identity and fraud prevention will completely reshape how consumers bank, transact and invest.
