Pushing for a technology upgrade, the state-owned Union Bank of India has announced to shell out Rs 1,000 crore over the next two years in technology. “We will be making Rs 1,000 crore of investments in technology this year (FY23) and next year. A large part of this investment will take place during the current financial year,” Union Bank executive director Nitesh Ranjan said.
According to Ranjan, the bank is moving from the monolithic technology structure to a very open, modular, microservices architecture in the IT system. “Large part of the Rs 1,000 crore investment will take place in building this architecture. On top of this, we will build a digital lending platform and some part of this investment will go there.”
The bank has also unveiled ‘Union SAMBHAV – World of Opportunities’, a future digital-ready transformation project along with its super app named UNIONNXT – Do it Yourself.
“Simultaneously, the mobile banking platform will also get updated and because of the microservices architecture, all these channels will get updated at the same point of time and there will be an omnichannel experience for customers,” he said.
The lender launched five digital lending products – pre-approved personal loan (PAPL), Union Cash (Pensioner loan), Shishu Mudra Loan, MSME Loan-Auto-renewal, and KCC loan-Auto-renewal.
Ranjan said the overall objective is to have 50 per cent of the business originations coming from the digital channels by 2025. Currently, almost 15 percent of the bank’s fixed deposit (FD) accounts are opened through the mobile channel.
The lender expects 60-70 per cent of the FD opening through the mobile itself going ahead. Ranjan said nine months back, the bank was onboarding an average of 6,000-7,000 new customers on the mobile app. Today, it is onboarding 20,000 customers per day.
