ENCASHING THE DIGITAL explosion

Continuing the journey, Banking Frontiers organized the 2023 edition of Technoviti conference cum awards, where the latest business challenges and opportunities were discussed along with emerging technologies and the evolving regulatory space

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Panel Discussion 1
Rural & Space - An Intelligent Connection

Highlights of the panel discussion held at Technoviti 2023 in Mumbai:

Alok Shukla: The speed with which the technology is progressing is a driver for transformation and disrupting lives. We have satellites which have resolution even a few meters. How do you see satellite imagery disrupting the lending sector? Are we are moving towards farm level underwriting with the technology?

Nirav Parekh: The current situation is that banking is already on a run with fintechs taking over everywhere. Agriculture is a space where banks have for long been waiting to reach their customer base. So it's a very welcome sign for banking. That's where satellite would help.

While lenders focus on collateral, cash flow is more critical. Why banks look for collateral is because there is a lack of control on cash flow. So ideally, the moment you start getting controls on cash flows, your collateral can be done away with.

In agri, cash flow is very critical role. Satellite images will actually help understand what will be the crop pattern, what will be the crops and what will be the farmers' realization. This plays a very significant role in deciding the extent of  lending and to derive the quality of lending over a period of time.

Since bankers can't reach everywhere, the satellite images will be the key to go right into the countryside. Farm level assessments have already started happening. How do you build it on an AI is what is being spoken about. Most of the bankers have already started doing things where we get a complete idea of the cropping pattern at a particular farmland while sitting at our offices to then go ahead with the lending.