Mrutyunjay Mahapatra  
MD & CEO 
Syndicate Bank

Brand Projections 2019

Syndicate Bank is a robust Bank with a strong pan India presence. As a brand, it is one of the oldest among the commercial Banks. Digital Transformation is going to be the primary focus of Syndicate Bank this year. During the year, Project ‘Suparna’, which is the new version of CBS will be implemented throughout the country. The new Internet Banking and Mobile Banking software will be in place shortly. A digitally strong Syndicate Bank can penetrate the rural areas of the country more effectively than most of its competitors. It has a very strong rural base with about 59% of its branches being in rural or semi urban areas. It has about 2700 ‘Bank Mitr’ who have been providing ‘Door Step Banking’ in rural areas much earlier than it was mandated by GOI vide RBI notification in Nov 2017. It can therefore easily satisfy all the three core components of Digital India - The development of secure and stable digital infrastructure, delivering government services digitally, and universal digital literacy.

Transforming Customer Journey

The year 2019 is undoubtedly the year of buying experience. The customer today expects banking transactions to be smooth, seamless and swift--whether online or offline. This requires an outstanding end-to-end unified process. To facilitate this, Syndicate Bank has fast tracked both internal and customer facing digital technologies. The IT infrastructure has been comprehensively upgraded and made ready to move into market benchmarked technologies like private and public cloud, service oriented architecture, next generation data management and agile project management. The priority for the year 2019 will be to put in place a system which is a great process intelligence from end to end, keeping the customer at the center. It aims to deliver a truly personalized experience. The CX will serve as the base of customer trust and loyalty. This automatically translates into enhanced business. Increased productivity and ‘Ease of Business’ should be the natural outcome. It has already set the ball rolling by posting a profit for the second successive quarter.

Today the customers are buying the experience, not just the product. This holds true for all businesses including Banking. Convenience is the key word today. To stay in the game, it is required to tweak its offerings, reacting to the customer as swiftly as possible to make banking convenient for the customer, in order to stay one step ahead of its competitors. The Bank is investing greatly in technology. With the help of global consultants, it is already on the path of transforming itself into a world-class organization which would be capable of delivering the best in class. It is looking for new ways to stand out among the crowd. At the heart of this change are the digital enhancements that provide prospects and customers with genuinely happy experiences, driving greater satisfaction levels.

Action Plan

Decades ago, branding was defined as a name, slogan, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of these elements that distinguish one company, product or service from another. Today branding is more complex and even more important. It is not just about getting the target market to select you over the competition; it is also about retaining them. Syndicate Bank is a brand that is now 94 years old. It has had a glorious past, though it did lose some sheen in the past years, but it is now definitely metamorphosing into a new and improved version of itself. It shall definitely be occupying a lot more space in media in the current year – be it print, audio or social media and eventually in the minds of the people.

Commitment to Digital India and Swachh Bharat Mission

Digital India is all about ensuring that the Government‘s services are made available to citizens across the country, electronically by making the country digitally empowered in the field of technology. The transformations it has now embarked upon at Syndicate Bank is going to lead it to an entirely different and enhanced level of effectiveness –

·    Its Digital transformation, with the able support of a leading global consultant will be helping the bank to use digital technology to solve traditional problems.
·    The implementation of the new version of CBS is slated to be complete by the year end.
·    Internet banking and Mobile banking software are being upgraded.
·    Analytics capability through Analytics Centre of Excellence is slated to be established.
·    Data Lake, TMO, ecommerce enablement and rapid ramp up of ATM and digital usage is being focused upon.

Syndicate Bank also plans to reach out to the customers in a major way. All this and much more in the pipeline puts the bank in a position, which is in sync with the mission Digital India.