BT Best Banks: Financial services in the new age

Nearly every sector we know of is undergoing deep-rooted change thanks to rapid technological developments. The banking and financial services industry is no exception. In these changing times, where the use of Generative AI (Gen AI) is becoming widespread, the banking sector is also witnessing changes where Gen AI use cases are arming banks and financial institutions with greater efficiency and superior risk management. That’s one part of the changes the space is going through. Banks, meanwhile, are up against a multitude of challenges. Retail banking is witnessing some churn thanks to the Reserve Bank of India increasing the risk weightage on unsecured loans. This will mean higher capital adequacy requirements for banks and NBFCs. Besides, banks are also witnessing increasing competition from NBFCs, with big names like Reliance’s Jio Financial, Godrej, Poonawalla and Piramal making rapid strides to fill the credit gap. Add to that the slower growth of private capex leading to lower corporate loan activity, and the subdued growth of CASA deposits. Even though bank balance sheets are much stronger now, they clearly have a plethora of issues to contend with. 

This year’s BT-KPMG Survey of India’s Best Banks and NBFCs comes to you against this background. In keeping with the growing importance of NBFCs in the financial services space, we have included them this year in the survey. Despite the challenges, these are exciting times for the financial sector, and the winners we profile this year have successfully navigated this unpredictable landscape. As Anand Adhikari writes in his opening essay: “While challenges persist, the next three to five years are poised to be exciting for the space with players creating a foundation for the future by investing in technology.” This year’s rankings see a stellar line-up of banks and NBFCs, and, as always, we bring you both the quantitative winners based on pure performance data, and qualitative ones decided by a jury comprising some of the most respected names in the corporate and financial world. 

This year, the jury was chaired by former RBI Deputy Governor Anand Sinha, with the other members being Ashishkumar Chauhan, MD & CEO, NSE; Ranu Vohra, Co-founder & Executive Vice Chairman, Avendus; Pallav Mohapatra, MD & CEO, Arcil; N.S. Kannan, former ED, ICICI Bank; and Rajiv Kaul, Executive Vice Chairman & CEO, CMS Info Systems. Among the key winners were ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank that were declared joint winners of the Bank of the Year award. HDFC Bank also won the Best Large Indian Bank award, while Bank of Maharashtra won in the mid-sized category, and J P Morgan was declared the Best Large Foreign Bank. The Best Large NBFC award went to Bajaj Finance. The jury also unanimously decided to confer the Lifetime Achievement Award on Uday Kotak, Founder and Director of Kotak Mahindra Bank, for his immense contribution to the world of finance