Accelerating the digital transformation journey at Aditya Birla Capital

When COVID-19 was declared a pandemic and a lockdown was imminent, many companies scrambled to deal with its impact on their operations and customers. Aditya Birla Capital Ltd (ABCL), on the other hand, was already ahead of the curve.

The holding company for the Aditya Birla Group’s financial services businesses, Aditya Birla Capital has brought the power of data analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools into business automation to stay closer to customers through the lockdown, and beyond.

With over 4 million customer interactions on digital and social media platforms, including WhatsApp, own websites, apps and chatbots, ABCL companies recorded nearly twice as much volume through digital channels between April and June 2020 as compared to the same period last year. The company has built one of the most comprehensive WhatsApp channels in the industry for servicing customers with over 180 services across products.

The lockdown has been a touchstone test of ABCL’s digitisation journey in many ways. It accelerated the deployment of new and advanced technology tools in ways and at speeds that perhaps would not have been possible otherwise.

Owing to the ongoing lockdown, there has been a shift in demand for zero contact and paperless purchase options. ABCL, through the digital enablement of its subsidiaries, on-boarded over 90 per cent customers through digital channels alone in FY20, as compared to 72 per cent in FY19. The firm ensured that its businesses offer non-contact, paperless and hassle-free purchase journeys across product lines through mobile apps and tabs, with its distributors assisting customers virtually. Technologies such as biometrics, intelligent OCR, video KYC, electronic mandate registration and e-contracts made the customer onboarding process entirely virtual and seamless. Over 200 robotic automation processes running in the mid and back-office processes made customer transactions faster and more efficient.

Well-timed moves

According to CEO Ajay Srinivasan, ABCL began preparing for the impending lockdown much before it was actually announced. While the nature and impact of a potential lockdown was uncertain, the senior management at its subsidiaries and JV companies had swung into action as early as February. A business continuity plan (BCP) was rolled out, and measures were initiated to deal with the potential mass-scale disruption that was to come.

The experiences from Italy, Spain and New York had made one thing clear – physical movement and transactions would come to a screeching halt for some time. The best recourse was to deploy digital tools and software quickly to keep the businesses running and cause the least possible disruption.

It helped that the company was already on a digital transformation path much before the pandemic hit. The Aditya Birla Group had kicked off its digitisation strategy as far back as 2017 to integrate data analytics, AI and robotics into operations. As a services company, ABCL too had been transitioning into digital sales strategies and outreach for distributors and other channel partners, alongside automation of key internal and customer-facing functions. Over 98 per cent of its distributors were onboarded digitally in Q1 FY 20. The digital moves showed their full potential during the pandemic.

Once the lockdown came into effect, technology was put into overdrive to serve existing customers and onboard new business. ABCL even launched several industry-first initiatives like change of address requests in the stockbroking business on its web portal through video-based interaction, renewal of health insurance policies through WhatsApp and registering mutual fund SIPs on WhatsApp, thanks to its comfort with digital automation.

Proof of the pudding

The results of these efforts have been flowing in since. Aditya Birla Sun Life, the life insurance arm, achieved new business premiums equivalent to last year’s numbers during April-May 2020, with the help of pre-approved digital products and telephonic sales support. The business has launched a machine learning based voice bot for renewal collection from customers and has been able to successfully connect to over 80 per cent of its target customer base for resolution.

Aditya Birla Health Insurance, with over 90 percent of its sales and operations processes digitised, continued its claims process with little or no disruption to the customer experience. It launched tele underwriting and video underwriting during the lockdown to understand customers’ health condition before policy issuance.

This worked wonders. According to the company, self-service actions by customers shot up 65 per cent in April 2020 against the FY20 average, while digital reach increased over four times in April 2020 as compared to the FY20 average. A staggering 92 per cent of policy renewals in the health insurance business were achieved through digital channels during April 2020, compared to a 58 per cent average during FY20.

Aditya Birla Finance, the lending business arm, has been among the earliest companies in the NBFC space to launch video-KYC for on boarding customers digitally. Salaried personal loan business sourcing, underwriting and the disbursement journey have all been migrated end-to-end to digital platforms since June 2020. 75 per cent customers were onboarded digitally in Q1 FY21.

The mobile sales onboarding initiative launched by the housing finance business saw widespread adoption, with 85 per cent of all files sourced digitally in July 2020, twice that in Q1 FY21. The lending and housing finance business also launched voice bots for collection and moratorium calls to existing customers.

On the mutual funds side, the use of AI and machine learning technology brought in unprecedented benefits, as well. Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC introduced a Google Assistant based voice bot to address its most common customer queries. The digital voice assistance platform uses AI and machine learning to operate as a 24X7 chat service addressing investors’ queries and service requests around their portfolio and account details. Its machine learning based email bot has automated servicing of over 30,000 customer queries a month for its customers and distributors.

The company’s new registrations through the video e-KYC (know your customer) platform more than doubled between January and April this year, with over 50,000 new investors added through this platform during the nationwide lockdown. The new AI-based digital customer onboarding solution ensures a zero-contact, paperless process that does away with any physical documents as part of the KYC process.

These innovative measures have not just fast tracked ABCL companies in their digital journeys; they are testimony to the commitment of the Aditya Birla Group to future proof its business strategy and stay relevant to customers with changing times.