Neo-banks and their confluence with India’s Financial Landscape
-Sameer Gahlot | Financial Services Division (finserv@vinodkothari.com)
Introduction
Since the beginning of the 21st century, technological and digital innovation has improved the efficiency, productivity, and competitiveness in the delivery of financial services[1] and continue to do so. This resulted in benefitting and enhancing the reach and experience for the end customers. These innovations could be possible only due to the dynamic environment whose impetus is on recalibrating the traditional models currently in vogue and to redefine them suiting the current needs. It won’t be surprising, if one could recognize this era with certain buzzing words like digital servitization, circular economy, glocaslisation etc. The disruption caused by the pandemic seems to be the turning point for this century, which outlandish the entire situation and persuaded different players to ponder for out of the box solutions. The innovation has probably reached its zenith during this phase where traditional market players, mainly relying on the physical marketplace, collapsed at a blink of eye whilst many more opportunities emerged. One such innovation is evolution of the concept of neo-banks, which has become the recent buzzword in the financial sector. To put it simply, neo-banks are a digital version of a traditional bank. Several ‘neo-banks’ have been set up in India and abroad during the previous couple of years. Read more →