Chirag Jain, Director – Operations, Canara HSBC Oriental Bank of Commerce Life Insurance Company Limited talks to Pankaj Maru about the role played by IT in driving the organization, significance of technology for business operations, company’s IT and security landscape and future of BFSI amid the rise of new technologies.
Can you give some insights into the role played by IT/technology in meeting the needs of your organization?
We believe that IT plays a stellar role in the successful and optimal operation of any organization and our business model is aligned around our strong IT infrastructure. Majority of our critical business processes are fully automated, workflow driven and systems controlled. going forward, we believe that IT will play an even bigger role for the front-end or customer acing part of the business and hence, the future road-map of our organization is also tightlybuilt around better services being offered using technology.
Being in the BFSI space how much of your business operations internally as well as externally relies on technologies like cloud computing and mobility?
Cloud and mobility are evolving very fast and are set to become more important as they evolve and mature further. However, insurance is significantly different from rest of BFSI in terms of transactional intensity. Here, the technologies are evolving continuously are yet to mature. These factors and concerns over security and access management suggest that one remains cautious. We are exploring and experimenting with technology at this stage to understand which part of our front-end distribution will benefit most from use of mobility and cloud computing. At this stage, we are running a few pilots and PoCs (proof of concepts). This will give us a better understanding of utility of these new tools and give a clearer visibility on user benefits. We will continue to invest more on mobility and cloud computing in future.
Can you brief on organization’s IT infrastructure landscape in terms of IT systems, data centers, applications and so forth.
We have a state-of-the-art infrastructure/data center with all appropriate controls. At the application level we are highly automated and integrated with adequate controls and processes to handle contingencies. Most of our process is paperless. We have collaboration tools which ensure that the communication channels are smooth and live, across the breadth of the organization.
While IT security remains the key concern for BFSI sector, so what kinds of security measures or mechanism are in place to guard against data breaches, online frauds and so forth?
We believe that IT security and information security are to be dealt together. For IT security, we ensure that all steps are taken to proactively manage our environment in such a way that we have strong perimeter control. Further, we have adequate control at all end points. We keep abreast with the latest developments in the area of security and ensure on keeping our security systems up to date. Further, we also take the desired steps to keep up with information security initiates to balance it well with the efforts of our IT security tools.
In your view, how is the BFSI sector shaping up with the adoption of new technologies and how do you see the future of this segment in the context of IT?
BFSI sector’s reliance on technology is already quite high and it is unimaginable to run this sector without IT today. However, most of technology deployment in past was towards the back-end processing. In last decade, we have witnessed an increasing trend towards 24×7 services and selfservicing. This makes it necessary to deploy at front-end so that the businesses can provide technology enabled interfaces to the customers. Especially in India with explosion in the usage of mobile internet and with logistical challenges to brick and mortar servicing models, technology is becoming central for customer service and customer interactions. For BFSI organizations, to adopt mobility for delighting customer will soon become an existential strategy.
However, insurance is significantly different from rest of BFSI in terms of transactional intensity. Here, the technologies are evolving continuously are yet to mature. These factors and concerns over security and access management suggest that one remains cautious. We are exploring and experimenting with technology at this stage to understand which part of our front-end distribution will benefit most from use of mobility and cloud computing. At this stage, we are running a few pilots and PoCs (proof of concepts).
