Riding into 2025 on Personalization, Self-Service & AI

Sujit K Shakya is looking at increasing the use of AI in various services such as credit underwriting and credit monitoring

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Sujit K Shakya, Senior Deputy CEO at Nabil Bank and M. Khorshed Anowar, Deputy Managing Director & Head of Retail & SME Banking at Eastern Bank share their respective bank's goals for 2025 and the route to achieving them:

Ravi Lalwani: The BFSI sector is rapidly shifting toward more personalized and digital-first financial services. What specific advancements or strategic changes does your organization plan to implement by 2025 to meet evolving market expectations? Are there particular markets where you aim to expand your presence or market share?

Sujit K Shakya: Nabil Bank, being one of the leading banks of Nepal, has already established a separate vertical in the name of nBank and has been providing various digital banking services through nBank mobile app in line with the strategic objective of the bank. nBank is conceptually developed like a neo-banking platform with ambitions of creating a pure virtual bank within Nabil Bank. Further, it has recently started the appointment banking services, which is the first of its kind services in Nepal. Nabil bank has always been the pioneer in various innovative services and plans to expand full-fledged digital banking through nBank app without the need of the customer to visit the branches. Apart from account services, digital loans and loans against fixed deposits, the bank plans to expand the nBank platform into SME and retail Loan applications and assessment in the coming year.

The bank also aims to aggressively increase its scope of operations for card and QR merchant business in major tourism markets to enable tourists from all over the world to travel and transact seamlessly. This will enable travel safety and reduce hassles of carrying heavy cash, and also encourage many small businesses in these markets to adopt cashless banking habits, which will ultimately help their access to finance and capital when they need it.