Banking: Frequent outages raise uncomfortable questions

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There are few things as inconvenient or frustrating to citizens as a futile attempt to access a banking website or app for transaction purposes. Despite the regular clamour of banks upgrading technology, improving customer service, insistence on using technology platforms for remote banking, outages on their platforms seem to have become a regular irritant.

Frequent disruptions in banking platforms that provide crucial activities to the common people is not acceptable. Investors and traders were terribly inconvenienced on February 24 when an outage gripped NSE. But it has not happened again so far. If glitches that paralyse service take place regularly they go beyond the pale of one-time negligence or oversight and raise bigger issues of accountability of banks to their customers. Worse, it also triggers doubts of adequacy of regulatory action. The Reserve Bank of India took punitive steps against a few banks, but that has not stopped the disruptions.

There are bigger questions that creeps into the mind on the issue of Indian companies being proactive, and aggressive, in enlisting new customers with baits but not half as attentive in providing after sales service. There is also a lurking apprehension that though big banks might claim otherwise they are not making adequate investments in technology that has become a major enabler of service.

All major Indian banks that have customer bases surpassing the total population of many prominent countries are legacy organisations that should have made transition to technology enabled-service long ago to keep up with the broader push for digital India and modern day banking. Though banks are always prompt in claiming that they are making adequate investments and focusing on technology, the experience of the customer don’t live up to those claims.

The country cannot afford to proceed on a path of digital revolution when its most prominent banks keep failing their customers at regular intervals.