Mint BFSI event today to host top regulators, finance pros

Outlining their vision will be M. Rajeshwar Rao, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI); Ananth Narayan G., whole-time member of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi); Deepak Sood, whole-time member of Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai); and Deepak Mohanty, chairperson of the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA).

Giving them august company at the 17th edition of the Mint BFSI Summit will be former Sebi chairman M. Damodaran, who is currently chairperson of Excellence Enablers. In addition to delivering a keynote address, Damodaran will also give away the Mint BFSI Awards to the winners.

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The second edition of the awards has been executed by Mint in partnership with HowIndiaLives.com and Fisdom. The awards span banks, insurance firms, non-banking finance companies (NBFCs), and mutual funds. The winners were decided by an eminent jury panel comprising Tarun Chugh, MD and CEO, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance; Amish Mehta MD and CEO, Crisil; Nithya Easwaran MD, Multiples Alternate Asset Management; and Keki Mistry, additional and non-executive director, HDFC Bank.

While the regulators will dwell on their respective sectors and what challenges they see as India moves forward, there will be several other sessions through the day on various aspects of the BFSI (banking, financial services, insurance) industry.

Various aspects of India's financial services industry are facing their unique set of issues. The banking industry is looking to scale up low-cost deposits, its bread and butter, in the face of an onslaught by other investment options available to investors. Primary among those options is stocks, where the participation of retail investors has surged in recent times, with chunks of savings being moved to more risky equity investing. This session will see a discussion between top bankers Hitendra Dave of HSBC India, Pranav Chawda of J.P. Morgan Chase India, and Prashant Kumar of Yes Bank.

The markets face their own challenge, with a prolonged bull run now disrupted by severe volatility, emanating from geopolitical crises, the flight of foreign capital to other economies, and the return of Donald Trump as the US president, among other things. Should investors remodel their investment strategies and diversify their investment basket? A trio of top mutual fund CEOs from ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund (Sankaran Naren), DSP Mutual Fund (Kalpen Parekh), and HDFC Asset Management Co Ltd (Navneet Munot), will debate this subject at the top of every investor's mind.

The recent bull run also saw a surge in initial public offerings (IPOs), with several of them hugely oversubscribed. Experts say investors should not rush for any IPO that seems attractive. So, what are the guardrails? Top experts Amit Ramchandani of Motilal Oswal Investment Advisors, Kaushal Shah of Kotak Mahindra Capital Co., Madhurima Mukherjee, of JSA Advocates & Solicitors, and Nirav Shah of Equirus Capital will lay down the watchlist.

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On the insurance front, the arrival of Bima Sugam, a single-window, online marketplace to buy and sell insurance, settle claims and compare policies has the potential to disturb existing business models of companies as well as aggregators. How are companies preparing for the new era? Mayank Bathwal of Aditya Birla Health Insurance, Vishal Gupta of PhonePe Insurance and Rajiv Gupta of PB Fintech Ltd. will deliberate on the challenges.

As technology in general and artificial intelligence (AI) in particular transform banking, the question to ask is whether AI will completely disrupt the way banking is done today. The general consensus is that AI will aid risk management, ease compliance burden, and help banks connect better with users. What else can AI do? And what other technologies are banks using to derive that competitive edge? A power-packed panel will take on this subject, comprising Vidya Krishnan of SBI, Anjani Rathore of HDFC Bank and Puneet Gupta of Netapp.

Several other sessions are planned as well, including one on whether NPS is the silver bullet for pensions in India, how fintechs can balance disruption and regulation, whether NBFCs should get greater access to public deposits, how differentiated banks such as payments banks are delivering value to consumers, the climate financing challenge being faced by Indian banks, and what digital transformation in banking is going to look like in the future.