DHFL plans to make AI an underlying capability across all business processes

AI in housing finance has automated processes and reduced the cost of serving customers. While AI has reduced the cost of financial services it has also made financing convenient

At the heart of its vision to build a nation of happy home owners, is DHFL’s strong technological edge, which the company is continuously sharpening through pioneering cutting-edge initiatives. DHFL believes that a seamless customer experience, which remains at the forefront of its growth strategy, can only be enabled through technological innovations that can transform the way it services customers who seek solutions towards fulfilling their homeownership dreams.

“Led by this belief, we deploy technology not only to boost our operational efficiencies, but also to create an environment in which we can nurture and realise our mission of ‘Giving India a Home’ more expeditiously, efficaciously and seamlessly. Pre-empting the unique needs of our customers, addressing the industry challenges, delivering path-breaking solutions, and ensuring total data safety are the drivers of our organisation-wide technological empowerment agenda. From infrastructure development to across-the-board digitisation, and augmentation of our data safety framework, we have rolled out a series of initiatives aimed at ensuring continuity of services and better application response at critical locations for our customers,” says Jyothirlatha B, Chief Technology Officer, DHFL.

Creating value through customised solutions
In line with its strategic charter of enabling a smooth customer experience, DHFL has rolled out several ingenuous initiatives aimed at creating an ecosystem that is crafted to offer customised products and solutions in the most seamless of ways. Utilisation of effective solutions is central to this approach, which seeks to enable quicker automated credit decisioning, straight-through processing at higher efficiencies and lower processing times.

“Our digitisation focus is also aligned with our philosophy of using the latest technologies to provide 24×7 on-the-go service for our customers, who can digitally connect with us on anywhere, anytime basis with the help of their mobile phones, laptops, etc, to access our portfolio and procure their personal discussion reports from our credit team,” she says.

Tech at the core
With security critical to its business ethos, DHFL remains focused on ensuring the safety of customers’ data. She informs, “Our technological focus is geared towards improving customer centricity while creating a technology-friendly environment for our employees. Faster decision making through automation and analytics, helps amplify our operational productivity and efficiencies, helping in building a strong foundation to enhance value for all our stakeholders. We strongly believe in disrupting technology to drive new technological interventions across our business value chain. We remain committed to using technology as a major engine of our growth strategy in the evolving industry landscape that is strongly rooted on digitisation and technological revolution.”

DHFL is expanding its technology landscape through advanced technology solutions as part of its digital transformation programme which comprises of technology enablers for business growth and operational efficiency along with a lot of emphasis on IT security.

The journey towards digital transformation is to enhance customer and employee experience by strengthening enterprise architecture and expanding the digital footprint to meet evolving business needs. DHFL is also exploring technology innovations and intelligent analytics to draw meaningful insights to stay ahead of the curve.

Role of technology in digital transformation
DHFL has a comprehensive digital strategy to support business growth and improve customer servicing. With API driven technology architecture, the company’s technology landscape is evolving to be future compatible. DHFL is expanding its digital footprint in multiple channels by enhancing mobility and web capabilities to service internal as well as external customers.

Business processes are being digitalised with complete digitisation of documents and rule based workflows. With focused enterprise mobility strategy, DHFL has launched enterprise mobility solutions to increase the efficiency and productivity of its operations and technical team for better employee experience.

“Our customer mobile app will be launched soon for better customer experience offering self service capabilities. Data analytics being one of the focus areas, we have come up with predictive data models which are being used in multiple areas of loan processing. These models are being further enhanced with AI. At DHFL, we have a hybrid cloud strategy. We have moved some of our applications already to cloud. We would continue adopting more cloud based services complying to the regulatory norms,” she comments.

Creating a digital eco-system
With digitisation emerging as a major pivot around which business models are now being structured, DHFL has aggressively embarked on a digital roadmap for its strategic growth. DHFL has digitised its internal processes, such as employee on-boarding, meetings and several applications, while its ‘Phygital’ integrated ecosystem enables seamless interaction of customers on physical and digital platforms. “Our new website is helping capture leads, and we are also exploring advanced technological solutions in the areas of data analytics, mobility, cloud as well as futuristic technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), predictive analytics, bot-based customer services and mobile apps,” says Jyothirlatha.

AI focus
AI in housing finance has automated processes and drastically reduced the cost of serving customers. While AI, on one hand, reduced the cost of financial services, on the other, it has made financing extremely convenient to avail.
“We are also working on chatbots for our employees. Our chatbots use natural language processing (NLP) capabilities. With added AI and machine learning (ML) capabilities, these bots will evolve over a period of time. We are using certain FinTech solutions that are powered with OCR, AI and data analytics techniques for securing business insights. Our data centre management is also powered with AI based monitoring. We plan to make AI an underlying capability across all business processes. In future, AI and cognitive computing will be combined with data analytics to get key insights from the data to aid decision making,” she concludes.