Rising cyber fraud puts customers at risk; banks need to invest more: Bank of Baroda CEO

There is a growing need for both financial and digital literacy at a time when technology use is rising, along with incidents of cyber fraud and digital arrests, according to Debadatta Chand, MD and CEO of Bank of Baroda.

"There are two types of frauds that happen. One is vulnerability at the bank level, and the other is vulnerability at the customer level, where people get trapped in digital arrests or other cyber incidents. Customer vulnerability can only be addressed through greater awareness, and there we need to invest heavily in both financial literacy and digital literacy," Chand said at the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai.

On bank-level vulnerabilities, too, Chand said there was no doubt that banks had to invest more.

"Let's accept the fact that the cyber threat is not on paper, but real. Multiple attacks happen day in and day out, but until it hits you, you don't feel it is real. So, we need to invest more," he stressed.

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Bank of Baroda faced a cyber incident in July this year. Reports indicated that some bank data had been published on the dark web. At the time, the bank linked the data breach to a potential business email compromise and engaged an independent CERT-In-empanelled cybersecurity agency to conduct a comprehensive assessment and investigate the nature and extent of the alleged compromise.

Meanwhile, AI adoption has been growing across the banking system. Bank of Baroda is using AI for customer engagement and is working on multiple use cases, according to Chand.

AI is also being used in areas such as underwriting, product management, and the back-end customer care centre, he pointed out.

The bank also has a GenAI-powered virtual relationship manager, Aditi, which enables conversational banking services.

As technology adoption grows, what will it mean for the physical branch ecosystem?

Chand said the bank had developed a phygital branch model, where customers can access digital self-service tools along with human assistance.

There are now 30 such phygital branches, according to Chand. "In India, because of the large population, we need to have both models and convert most physical branches into a phygital model," Chand stated.

At the same time, as digital penetration increases, banks will need to invest more in that area, he said.