Over the past few decades, India has made tremendous strides in financial services. Not only has it become the global leader in fast payments – thanks largely to the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) – it’s also home to one of the top fintech ecosystems in the world.
With per capita incomes increasing, more Indians are taking out loans, opening new banking accounts, and investing in shares and mutual funds. The country’s digital lending market alone is expected to grow $515 billion in book size by 2030, while mutual fund assets under management (AUM) are projected to exceed $3.26 trillion over the next decade.
All of this spells good news for India’s financial services institutions – but only those that can keep pace with the forces reshaping the industry.
Today’s customers expect more at every turn – more digital experiences, more personalisation, more trusted financial advice. Unfortunately, 56% of global consumers, including Indians, say their institutions don’t proactively anticipate their financial needs. In addition, 47% often have to repeat or re-explain information to different representatives.
Technologies like AI are another force reinventing the financial services game. Sixty-five percent of consumers believe AI will speed up financial transactions, while seven in 10 consumers expect financial processes to be at least partially automated.
Addressing these demands will call for a complete industry transformation:
- From human-only service → AI-assisted transactions at scale
- From fragmented systems → a unified view of the customer
- From reactive customer engagement → proactive financial guidance
- From product-centric selling → customer-centric relationship management
- From static insights → real-time data-driven decision making
- From price-based competition → experience-led differentiation
- From manual workflows → AI-powered automation
The end goal, as always, is to ensure revenue growth. With that in mind, here are 3 critical priorities that financial services institutions in 2026 and beyond need to be focusing on:
1. Streamlining onboarding
| Why it matters | What to do |
| First impressions are more important than ever in a fiercely competitive, digital-first financial services landscape. | Onboard customers straight from your CRM, in the context of all your customer data Minimise onboarding friction by automatically providing the right disclosures and consent forms Integrate with third-party customer verification and screening providers to speed up KYC processes Reduce time-to-onboard and manual steps with automation |
2. Personalising engagement
| Why it matters | What to do |
| Customers increasingly expect financial services to be tailored to their needs and goals. | Unify your customers’ financial and transactional data, CRM data, and behavioural data in one view to personalise services Anticipate your customers’ needs by understanding their financial aspirations Optimise financial planning with a single data platform that eliminates the need to ask for customer information repeatedly Understand household income, expenditures, and net worth based on transaction analytics and insights |
3. Scaling service
| Why it matters | What to do |
| Customers expect help whenever and wherever they need it. | Reduce service costs by using AI agents to handle routine customer queries Establish a self-service portal for customers to quickly resolve simple requests Delight customers with connected, omnichannel service across digital and physical channels Accelerate service rep productivity with an intelligent, unified, automated workspace Eliminate the need to toggle between systems with a single-page view of the customer. |
Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating
Prioritising the above objectives is one thing, but putting them into action is a whole other ball game. That’s why we’ve put together a playbook featuring six financial services Trailblazers who demonstrate what it means to truly streamline onboarding, personalise engagement, and scale service.
Read their stories for practical tips and advice on how you can use technologies like Salesforce to unlock unprecedented revenue growth and lasting customer loyalty.
Learn how:
- Eduvanz simplified loan origination and customer onboarding
Impact: Onboarding time reduced from half an hour to just five minutes - Clear automated sales and user license management
Impact: 2x increase in renewal rates - Hero Fincorp used agentic AI to speed up credit decisioning
Impact: 80% reduction in loan turnaround time - UTI AMC unified over 20 million investor profiles, and hyper-personalised marketing
Impact: 2.5x increase in investor re-engagement - Angel One automated service, empowered reps with a unified customer view
Impact: 18-20% improvement in first call resolution; 30% drop in average handle time - Razorpay gives teams self-service analytics, intelligent insights, and live dashboards
Impact: Smarter business decisions; faster fraud detection
It’s your turn to achieve similar results.
Find out more about
The Financial Services Guide to Revenue Growth: Insights from 6 Industry Trailblazers
