Technology matters

Very few of us really notice the impacts of changes in technology in our day-to-day life. Most of the businesses in our country have little idea about what is happening in the world, how technology is going to affect their business. New ideas, innovation and technological advancement are considered the major driving forces of attaining competitive advantages in the market. Ideas are the most precious elements in this ever growing global market. A good idea helps the company go innovative and being profitable. So, thinking out of the box and accepting changes are very important for a firm to survive and grow over time.

Most of the banks operating in Bangladesh do not think innovative. Many banks do not have ideas about what will be the pattern of banking activities in the next five, ten or twenty years. Probably, we expect customers will be visiting our office, asking for financial services and bankers would pass a bundle of papers to fill up and sign for ever as they are doing now. But the question is after five or ten years how long will a customer be waiting in a queue for getting cash or a credit decision or a Sanction Letter? Unfortunately many of us don't have any idea about it. We even don't know how long the concept of branch banking will prevail when people have already started internet banking or mobile banking just sitting at home or even aboard a car.

If people can buy products from commodity market or make payment settlement using mobile apps within a moment, why shouldn't they ask for financial products like deposit products or loan products using mobile apps? Why do the customers still need to go to branch premises to open a Letter of Credit or negotiate shipping documents? Good news is that a good number of banks have already started 'Centralized Banking' and I believe they are getting the 'first-mover' advantage from the market.

Technology always expands exponentially. It must come and eat you up unless you could have adaptability with it or accept it in time. NOKIA, the world giant Mobile Phone Company, went into destruction when they refused to accept the changes and stop innovation. Accordingly, no matter how big or famous you are, you must fall down unless you go with continuous innovation and accept technological changes and implement the same in your organisation in a right time.

Banks in our country should have thinking over it seriously. Unfortunately, due to lack of corporate governance, bank faces constraints in designing appropriate strategy or planning. And if strategies for innovation are undertaken somehow, implementations or execution becomes a big challenge. Banks usually don't feel good to invest money in R&D. Noticeably, many banks have to keep themselves busy with trouble-shootings like reduction of NPLs, Liquidity Management, Provision Management, maintaining Capital Adequacy, etc. In most of the cases banks do not have long-term planning; they just try to fix the problems on an ad-hoc basis. They don't have time to imagine the gigantic wave of technology changes spreading increasingly over time, that might have severe impacts on bank-business.

The writer is a banker and columnist

kzaman906698@gmail.com