The Finance World Magazine| Edition: April 2023

Interview
Nilay Ranjan
Singh,
CEO of State
Bank India, DIFC
Nilay Ranjan Singh is the CEO of State Bank India, DIFC. He has
great experience in credit, syndication, international banking,
trade finance, treasury, risk, customer services, HR, and IT.
He is also experienced in administration, developmental and rural
banking, branch administration, as well as Financial planning and
General Banking.
Exclusive to The Finance World Magazine
Q. What do you think are the
biggest challenges facing the fintech
industry today, and how can they
be addressed?
Nilay Ranjan Singh: In the fintech
area, what is going on is the transition
of banking, which is normally the tip
of the iceberg; either “Know Your
Customer” (KYC) or the beginning of
things. It is more for the consumer
banking, credit card, and the starting
of things, but then what is required is
that they have to go forward and come
to the field of corporate banking and
trade finance, which is having a very
large scope. Besides that, they have
to address the risk and other areas
because they are daring, but this area
is very limited with a limited scope,
which is the internet. So, they have
to enlarge the scope and move further
beyond the consumer banking.
Q. In your opinion, what is the
most exciting fintech innovation
that’s come up over the past year,
and why?
Nilay Ranjan Singh: The most
exciting fintech innovation is that
we have just come into a sort of risk
management. I think the blockchain will
be able to help banks a lot in this area.
So, there will be more collaboration,
an area into which the fintech has
started coming.
Q. How do you think regulators
will strike a balance between
protecting consumers and affecting
innovation?
Nilay Ranjan Singh: What is
happening today is that all those are
converging; the regulatory world,
the banking and other regulators
are all converging and learning from
each other, from various countries,
geographies, and cases. Hence, they are
becoming wise and trying to protect
customers. At the same time, they
don’t want to stifle the innovation.
For instance, they are now giving you
a startup wherein you can work upon
and include the technology to serve the
customer and meet compliance at the
same time. So, we are going towards
compliance and sticking into it. In this
way, innovation is helping both the
costumers and the banks at the same
time in the fintech area.
48 www.thefinanceworld.com April 2023