How chatbots are mPOWER-ing digital lending in India

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How chatbots are mPOWER-ing digital lending in India

Technology is shattering a long held need to talk to someone before you take a financial decision or before you apply for a personal loan, gold loan or an auto loan. However, as financial products become more standardized, most people want instant responses to their queries instead of waiting to talk to someone.

Yes, there's still room for special offers that each bank can offer, but even for that there's no real need to talk to an agent.

In certain cases, executives connecting with you to offer loans inform that you are eligible for a personal loan of a large amount. But when you actually apply for it, you're told that the eligibility is for a far less sum. That's a broken experience that's neither good for the individual nor for the banks. 

That's where the rise of bots in the financial industry comes in the picture. A growing number of people are interacting with chat bots or chat robots to understand if they are even eligible to get a loan or not before applying for one.

Why waste hours and, in case, days in enquiries about a loan when it turns out you're not even eligible for it. Bots make the process a lot simpler.

While some bots are able to inform you about the process of applying for a loan, there are more advanced ones that are offered by some banks that go a step ahead and give you an in-principle loan approval. The same process had so far taken at least 48 hours through the most efficient loan processes. For instance, the YES mPOWER BOT, which provides an in-principle approval in real time.

So, when a customer contacts the bank through chat, mPOWER BOT ascertains customer’s credit worthiness in real time with the help of credit algorithms built into the bot.

Once the credit worthiness is ascertained, the mPOWER BOT instantly calculates your loan eligibility and offers an in-principle loan approval in just one minute. Since this is all written communication, everything is well documented and fears of fake promises or misleading claims get eliminated.

But just because the quotes were offered by a bot doesn't mean that human interaction is completely eliminated. Once the customer shows interest in the loan being offered, by a click of a button, the customer gets connected within 10 secs post applying on the mPOWER BOT from the product specialist of the Bank.

While this chatbot allows customers to get instant loans, which could be Personal Loan, Auto Loan, Business Loan, Used Car Loan, Loan against Securities or even Gold Loan, it also reduces the costs for the bank, which in turn can be passed on to the customer in terms of benefits.

And if you're thinking this is a far-fetched concept, you couldn't be more wrong. Chat bots from various banks are gaining immense popularity and increasing number of loans transactions are now supported through these bots.

YES BANK's mPOWER BOT, for example, receives on an average over 15,000 loan transactions/enquiries in a month. This number is projected to go up to 50,000 transactions/month in a 6 to 9 months’ time frame.

The simplicity and quick processing abilities of mPOWER BOT portrays immense possibilities to improve the overall productivity of all front-sales executive and the adoption number is projected to go up further in coming months.

Clearly, the bots are taking over. But they are here to work closely with humans to make loan process most user-friendly than it has ever been.


Written By: Sai Giridhar - Group President & National Head – Consumer Retail Lending and Mortgages, has been a thought leader & brand evangelist in YES BANK, building future ready digital transformational solutions for Lending & Mortgages business in India.

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