After the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) gave Bandhan Financial Services permission to become a full-fledged bank, the prospects of hiring in the bank at various levels have gone up. The new Bandhan Bank plans to open around 500-600 branches, raising its presence in 27 States from the current 22.
The Indian banking industry is a behemoth and one of the biggest recruiters. While private and foreign banks have always preferred candidates from B-schools, even nationalised and co-operative banks have nowadays started recruiting MBAs for various roles.
Several roles
The retail banking industry caters mostly to the financial needs of individuals, households and small businesses. Over the past few decades, retail banking has shown tremendous growth, based on the burgeoning middle-class and various reforms in the banking and financial sector. So what kind of roles do young aspirants hope to land in this sector? Let us examine few.
Customer Service: This role caters exclusively to servicing retail banking customers. This includes the entire gamut of retail financial transactions encompassing account opening, remittances, cash transactions, clearing, transfers, balance inquiries, account related operations, locker operations, other miscellaneous requests, investments in deposits, mutual funds and insurance.
Handling customer grievances, advising customers on the products and services commensurate to their needs and risk appetite also form integral part of this role. These roles have some business targets for acquisition of new customers as well as cross sales of products. Many banks offer bundled products and relationship managers are appointed to provide service to high net worth customers.
Product and Process Development: This role looks into product and process design, bundling of products, managing profitability of channels such as branches, phone banking, direct banking channels, pricing and distribution of the products.
Since financial products cannot be designed every now and then due to several regulatory restrictions, the focus today is on improvising the customer experience at branches, ATMs and other direct banking channels. Convenience, good customer service and quick delivery are the key mantras today to acquire new customers and retain existing ones.
Marketing: This role requires providing support to product teams, branches and third-party channels to help in penetration of the various products among customers.
Product launches, campaigns for existing and new services or products, preparing of collaterals for distribution in branches, ATMs, other user touch points, conducting consumer satisfaction surveys, designing information booklets, kiosks and liaising with external media for promotions, are all part of this role.
Audit and Compliance: These roles look at the efficiency of branches and other operations. The RBI lays down various operational guidelines for the functioning of banks and their branches. This is primarily done to ensure retail customers are not discriminated against and can benefit from all the facilities of the bank in a fair and transparent manner.
Moreover, banks deal with huge sums of public money; hence, safety and security of such money is at the core of banking transaction rules. Periodic audits are carried out at branches and other units of the bank by audit and compliance teams to check whether laid-down procedures are being followed.
Technology: Most banks today are taking investments in technology very seriously. The increased focus on deployment of technology is mainly to ensure lower operational costs and, more significantly, to provide customers speedy, convenient transaction experience.
Choosing the right banking software, data security, upkeep and maintenance of networks across branches and offices to keep the systems running smoothly and efficiently, are some of the requirements. While the tech-savvy banks have by now moved on beyond the most basic transactions to internet, telebanking and mobile interfaces, others too are following suit.
There are many other functions, such as retail operations, treasury, commercial banking, credit, secretarial, finance, quality control, personal loans, consumer durables loans, government business, and so on, where young aspirants can start their banking careers.
Rising e-commerce trade has also necessitated the development of payment gateways for faster and more secure online payments. Mobile-based money transfer services launched by mobile service providers are also gathering a lot of interest. These are also creating job opportunities for candidates with relevant banking experience.