People Orientation The Success Mantra

The small finance banks were confronted with big challenges that ranged across functions- domestic capital requirement, growth vs mature market strategy, cost vs revenue balance in operating in under-banked districts, technology and the biggest one - the human resource capacity.

- Vittal Rangan

The 18 month in-principle approval by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to the Top 10 Small Finance Bank (SFB) licensees concluded in April this year. What appeared to be an uphill task (November 2015, Human Capital), is now a thing of the past, with many of them launching their banks successfully, and, are able to look back at this eighteen month transition period with tremendous pride and satisfaction. The small finance banks were confronted with big challenges that ranged across functions domestic capital requirement, growth vs mature market strategy, cost vs revenue balance in operating in under-banked districts, technology and the biggest one - the human resource capacity. Most experts express that while other challenges can be met through off-the-shelf solutions, the challenge of human resource can be addressed in-house alone.

At the end of such a transition period, small finance bank launches by VIPs were indeed thought provoking. What made all this possible in an Industry that till recently was crippled with challenges such as cap on margins, increasing input cost, low visibility, scarcity of talent, and, above all lower regulatory protection? What made the Reserve Bank of India to recognize eight micro finance firms among the ten approved companies, when it had applicants from some of the top known corporate houses competing for this license? One visible answer is the demonstrated capability of these companies in handling people - employees and customers - in a sensitive manner. Such people orientation is well defined in research and practice literature as employee orientation and customer orientation, with one leading to the other (PO = EO ? CO).