'BFSI sector has seen enormous change in the last decade'

The banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector has always been seen as a traditional category where creating proper communication channels has been difficult for marketers. However, given the digital revolution that the country has seen in the last few years, the sector has seen many improvements in terms of communication.

At the Pitch BFSI Marketing Sum mit held in Mumbai on Tuesday, marketers and experts from the BFSI sector came together to talk about the changing narrative of the sector. The panel discussion on ‘Revisiting the Marketing Fine-Print’ had many experts from the sector to discuss the growing industry. Speakers included - Sapna Desai, Chief Marketing Officer, Manipal Cigna Health Insurance - Sachin Vashishta, Chief Marketing Officer, Paisabazaar.com - Sujay Rachh, Chief Marketing Officer, Nuvama Group - Lalitha Nayak, Incharge - Marketing, NPCI - Nalin Jain, Chief Marketing Officer - Godrej Capital - Senthilkumar V G, Head - Marketing & Branding, Bank of Baroda - Kishan Panpalia, Founding Team, PepperContent. The session chair was Abhishek Gupta, Chief Marketing Officer, Edelweiss Tokio Finance

Starting the conversation with their growth in the last couple of years, Senthilkumar gave an idea of the Bank of Baroda’s vision and their growing business. He said, “Let me give a background to our vision statement, it is to be a national bank of international standards with augmentation of stakeholders' value by care, concern, and competence. We see to it that it is not just a statement but it is a culture in the organization. We have 16.5 Crore customers, and in a day we do more than 7.5 crore transactions of which 90% are digital transactions. We have 55,000 business correspondents who are serving in the far-flung areas of the country.”

Speaking about digital transactions and how they are catering to the large user base, Nayak of NPCI said,"Every digital transaction that happens in India, there is a possibility that it goes through our platforms. There is a very large human intervention that happens with us, we have more than 300 million users… as Marketing we however are trying to customise our messaging / communication to them as much as possible."

"We do address consumer feedback as there are many streams of communication including safety, usage, linkage, awareness information , we want that number 300 million users to go up to as much as possible. We deal with smartphones, we also experimented with going offline. In marketing, my biggest challenge is that I have to ensure that my communication is not missed and the user feels special. Our different products have different TGs. Technology is helps us to gives analytics, and information, from these consumer insights we have evolved over a period of time using research,” Nayak added.

Gupta said that personalization is the way forward and turned Panpalia of Pepper Content to speak about the content that helps the organizations their consumers’ interest. Panpalia said that content helps the products to sell. He said, “I feel every company is a content company first, because when we sell our products, it's the content that we sell first.”

Desai of Manipal Cigna Health Insurance noted that the industry has changed alot especially after the pandemic. She said, “The health insurance industry has really changed over a decade. Earlier, when people used to say health insurance was a waste of money, now people don’t see it like that. Post pandemic people have started valuing health insurance.”

Vashishta of Paisabazaar.com spoke about how data has made it easier for them as well as for consumers to enable financial services quickly. He said, “When people are seeking a loan, they do not care about who is giving them the loan they just need the money. Out of the 100% of people who apply for loans only 30-35% make it because of various factors. We have at least 40 Million people who come to Paisa Bazaar who come to check their CIBIL Scores. We use this data to help consumers.”

Rachh of Nuvama Group spoke about how wealth is growing in India and the company’s expansion in different parts of the country. He said, “Wealth in India is growing in many folds, it is growing in multiple parts of the country. Firstly we are regulated and regulated for a reason because there's a lot of misselling that happens in this category and we welcome any move that comes in from the regulator to ensure that there is complete transparency for it needs to be done with the investors and in the interest of the investors. Second, you can't sit across or advertise on television or on any other platform and expect consumers to understand what your products are because it's very difficult to understand how an alternate product for that matter will work and how will it actually give you more returns than the usual products. And that requires one-on-one interaction engagement. Multiple requests, multiple interactions. We have opened more than 90 branches now across the country. We are extending not only in tier one tier 2 cities but we are going deep into the country.”