Aurigin: Pioneering fintech Equips Investment Banks for Covid-era

New York based Aurigin (formerly BankerBay), the largest M&A platform in the world with over USD 250 billion of live, curated deals, is rolling out a business solution that no bank can afford to ignore.

Aurigin is announcing "AiB," an enterprise solution designed to address the increasing needs of investment banks and their clients by digitizing the end-to-end process, from deal origination all the way to deal execution, in an integrated platform. Since its inception in 2014, Aurigin has been at the forefront of digital transformation in the investment banking industry and cites current global conditions as a table-thumping call to action.

"Investment banking has been ripe for modernization for decades, but long-standing traditions and a stubborn resistance to change have kept those brick-and-mortar forts intact during a tsunami of industrial digitization. Now due to Covid, banks simply have to act," says Romesh Jayawickrama, Aurigin's CEO and Founder.

Historically, investment banks have tended to tackle operational problems by adding or taking away people. These are neither long term nor scalable solutions. Aurigin's core principle is that high-cost human capital should only be used for high-value tasks, and technology should handle all the time-consuming heavy lifting. Although an obvious philosophy to adhere to, very few banks seem to live by this. The company estimates adoption of their technology can reduce man-hours in key areas by as much as 80%, reduce the time to market by 50% and reduce costs by 70%.

How it works – Aurigin's existing business model uses a proprietary algo-engine to rapidly and precisely connect companies seeking capital with institutions providing capital anywhere around the world. This technology has been extended further to deliver an enterprise solution for banks that digitizes the entire process, from the first loan a bank deploys to a company, to any equity capital raise and M&A, all the way to an IPO. AiB bridges the gaps between relevant divisions of a bank, whereby either clients or automated analyses will notify the most appropriate division of a bank of potential capital requirements. The platform then triggers the relevant process chain. This includes building marketing material, populating data rooms and matching the capital requirement with internal or external sources of funds via Aurigin's global ecosystem of investors. AiB provides digitized solutions for the clients, the banks and for any external investors.

"Banks' operating models are just too heavy. They are having to turn away billions of dollars of business because the unit costs of execution are too high. The need of the hour is to use technology to streamline processes, minimising those unit costs, increasing scalability and adding revenue streams to existing business lines," Jayawickrama says.

Covid has magnified existing problems for investment banks, to such a level that digital transformation is a strategic imperative across front, middle and back offices. Aurigin brings a long-term and scalable solution that will help transform the industry.

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Meet COO-Paisa - A Digital Currency Launched By An Indian Co-Operative Bank

It has been more than a month since the demonetisation surprise was dumped upon us by the Modi government. Whether we will be able to see all the long term benefits promised by the government is something that only time will tell, but for now the country is deeply bearing the brunt of the temporary cash scarcity created with 86% of liquid currency out of circulation.

In order to help out the Indian cooperative sector during this cash crunch period, Thenhipalam Cooperative Bank, a primary cooperative bank in Malappuram, Kerala, has come up with its own digital currency app CooPaisa. With the app, the bank is directly taking on the currently visible hegemony of e-payment wallets in the country which requires a smartphone and internet connection to operate.

The CooPaisa mobile application facilitates e-payment service to hundreds of people who have accounts at the Thenhipalam Cooperative Bank. In an effort to provide a smooth experience to its customers, the Malappuram branch of the bank has made arrangements with taxis, local shops, autorickshaws, and fish vendors within a 20 km radius of the bank.

The innovative e-payment payment solution has successfully enabled more than 21, 000 bank customers and 1000 merchandise shops in the bank's perimeter to make day-to-day purchases or pay for a taxi ride without making use of any currency.



The mobile app can be used by both vendors and customers. In order to pay for a purchase, the customer is required to scan the QR code available at the vendor's shop and type in the amount to be payed to the vendor. Once typed and okayed, the amount gets instantaneously transfered from the customer's bank account to the vendor's bank account. If in the case, the customer is a little apprehensive of the method, the vendor can help in the payment solution without compromising the security. Both the parties will be sent SMS confirmation about a successful transaction.

Since CooPaisa deducts the amount to be paid directly from one's bank account, it is much easier to use when compared to mobile wallets which need to be constantly filled when they run out of balance. Further, one other point which makes COOPaisa better than the e-wallets is the fact that it can also work without smartphones, by authenticating transactions by using one-time-password (OTP) alone.

For now, Thenhipalam Cooperative Bank hasn't set any minimum limit for the transaction using the COOPaisa app, and customers can easily make purchases for ₹1 to ₹10,000 per day.

While card payments might prove to be more profitable for retail chains and a number of other establishments, but when it comes to small businesses, the high cost of the device and service tax involved makes it a not so lucrative option to implement. In addition to this, the transaction charges that are applied by the card networks act as a major hindrance for the general public to make a switch from hard cash to card payments. The CooPaisa mobile app manages to solve all these aforementioned problems associated with card payment system all at once.

Currently, the app is available for customers in six panchayats - Chelembra, Vallikkunnu, Pallikkal, Thenhipalam, Munniyur and Peruvallur.

According to Thenhipalam Cooperative Bank, it had originally ended up mooting the CooPaisa mobile app project about 3 months back as they had never even thought about such a contingency at the stage of planning. However, the demonetisation drive immensely helped them in popularising CooPaisa.

The bank predicts that about more than 4000 of its customers will make use of the facility as within just three days of the app launch, it received more than 1,200 downloads.

Lakshmi, India’s First Robot to Be Appointed Customer Care Executive at a Bank

The next time you visit your bank (which might be happening quite often nowadays courtesy the Modi government's surprise demonetisation drive) be ready to greet a not so familiar face among the bank regulars. Kumbakonam-based City Union Bank recently debuted Lakshmi, India's very first banking robot.

It took more than six months of hard work to develop Lakshmi, an artificial intelligence powered robot that is the country's first on-site bank helper. The robot is capable of answering intelligently on more than 125 day-to-day bank related subjects.

Whether you want to know about the current interest rates on home loans or even know your current account balance, Lakshmi can tell you all. Apart from has also been programmed to connect to the core banking solution. For example, if a bank customer inquiries about his/her transaction history or bank account details, the robot will flash the answer to these on its display. Don't worry, sensitive financial information is displayed discreetly on the robot's screen and not voiced like in the case of generic questions.

Responding to a national newspaper on what prompted the bank to introduce Lakshmi, N. Kamakodi, City Union Bank's Managing Director and CEO had said that a recent study had revealed that bank staffers end up spending a majority of their time in answering some 120 basic questions. About 95% of these questions asked by customers were repetitive in nature. Hence, the Lakshmi was thought and developed. Now, the bank just has to feed the inputs and Lakshmi answering all these repetitive basic queries.

According to Mr. Kamakodi, seeing the kind of response that Lakshmi has been getting, the bank is in the midst of installing about 25-30 such robots in its different branches.

Lakshmi, who currently converses only in English, uses gestures, turns around and engages with the customers in almost a very life-like manner. Unlike other robots in the market, her speech isn't that formal, but more casual and relaxed. Further, since it is AI powered, it constantly learns from the interactions with the customers.

In the near future, City Union aims to programme the humanoid to be able to talk to customers in their native language Tamil. They're are also looking at enabling it to service the visually challenged bank customers.

All around the world, very few banks have employed robots at their branches to help both their staffers and customers. With Lakshmi, City Union wants to bring a whole new experience to India.

Apart from City Union, Top private lender HDFC Bank, is also experimenting with robots to answer customer queries. The humanoid is currently being tested at its innovation lab. Earlier in the year, we had reported how banks in India were warming up to the thought of using artificial intelligence in their services, and now it seems Lakshmi is a forward step in that very direction.

[Top Image: indiatimes.in]