Sir,

The Ministry of Communications under the Department of Posts has ventured into the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) sector through the recent launch of India Post Payments Bank (IPBB). The launch aims to capture the small and medium enterprise customer,  along with penetrating into every rural household.

The launch comes at a time when BFSI sector is witnessing volatile changes owing to vigilant RBI and its regulations, challenging scenario in banking operations and technology and frequent top-level leadership changes.

IPBB’s launch is also an opportunity at the time of two major milestones which will be witnessed in the next two years — the General Elections in 2019 and the year of many land-marks – 2020.

The current postal system consists of mail services, financial services and insurance services. The launch of IPBB is a definite opportunity to boost the turnaround, working and perception of the Post Offices in India by the year 2020. This could also result in a massive demand and growth in mail services offered by India Post.

Hence, such an opportunity should not be wasted by the Government and policy-makers. They should strive to be a complete financial inclusive institution rather than exploit the customers just through ‘Data First-Service Next’ approach.

It is still an irony that despite switching to Core Banking System, the current postal savings bank system is yet to offer internet banking to its customers and ATM based services is yet to made available to all. It is high time IPBB ensures fully equipped relevant technological packages, knowledge transfer initiative and customer awareness programmes.

Also as the Ministry is planning to diversify the insurance services, there is a huge opportunity to focus solely on Financial Services through IPBB, acquire robust technological infrastructure, penetrate effectively through its wide network of Post Offices and offer seamless services to SME and rural masses by 2020.

– S.D. Varun, Bengaluru, 10.9.2018

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