Honouring the best

At a glittering event held in the financial capital, the best in the financial sector, across banks, insurance and mutual funds, were recognised and honoured. Unlike last year, the Business Today-Money Today Financial Awards, this time, added new award categories in banks and mutual funds to reward performance based on the evolving nature of the services.

The evening was graced by Vinod Rai, the first Chairman of Banks Board Bureau and the former Comptroller and Auditor General of India, also the Chief Guest of the evening, and M.V. Nair, Chairman of CIBIL, also the Guest of Honour. Together, they gave away the trophies to winners along with Aroon Purie, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, India Today Group, and Anup Bagchi, MD & CEO, ICICI Securities.

The awards programme began with a welcome address by Prosenjit Datta, Editor, Business Today, followed by the panel discussion on the subject 'Digital transformation in financial services: How to leverage it to their advantage'. The panellists were Nitin Chugh, Country Head, Digital Banking, HDFC Bank; Sundeep Sikka, CEO, Reliance AMC; S. Prakash, Executive Director, Star Health Insurance; Rishi Gupta, MD & CEO, FINO PayTech; and Ujjwal Mathur, VP & Country Head - India Business, Tata Consultancy Services. The discussion was moderated by Rajeev Dubey, Managing Editor, Business Today.

All the panellists were unanimous in their view that digital is the way ahead. However, when it comes to India, the financial industry is still a long way off from seeing any meaningful disruption. Representatives from insurance and mutual fund sectors, meanwhile, highlighted that no matter how much we move towards digitisation, the need for personal touch to services remains.

Post the discussion, India Today Group's Purie spoke about the changing financial landscape over the past two decades, especially banking, thereby setting the stage for the address by Vinod Rai. Rai emphasised on the current crisis faced by the Indian banking industry, especially the public sector banks. He noted, "It's time to introspect why Indian banks are in a state they find themselves in today. The crisis situation has not happened overnight. Hence, it will be prudent to check where we went wrong and take necessary steps to check those missteps."

Before the award ceremony, Manoj Vijaikumar, Partner at BSR & Co (KPMG's audit arm), and Naveen Kukreja, Group Chief Marketing Officer, PolicyBazaar, apprised the gathering about the selection methodology. All the categories were analysed on the basis of one-year performance. Only in the case of mutual fund, for long-term awards, data of three years were considered.

Banks, which constitute the financial backbone of the economy, were adjudged across 11 categories, which were both qualitative and quantitative in nature. The knowledge partner for the category was auditing firm KPMG, which judged each of the banks operating in the country based on growth, quality of assets, quality of earnings, productivity and efficiency, among other parameters. The insurance sector was classified under general insurance, health insurance and life insurance categories. PolicyBazaar, the knowledge partner, evaluated insurance companies across three categories.

Best equity, debt and AMC of the year were judged on the basis of data from the last one year, while the long-term awards in each of the three categories were presented on the basis of three-year data. Accord Fintech aided the procedure with the much required data for mutual funds. The event was sponsored by ICICI Securities.