Inside India’s Shift to Intelligent Relationship Banking

The age of impersonal transactions is over.

For decades, the story of Indian banking was one of physical expansion and gradual digitisation. Today, that narrative is being rewritten, fast. The India Stack – the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN) and the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) – has fundamentally reset the customer’s relationship with finance. It has shown us that transactions can be instant, interoperable, and effortless.

The new competitive arena for Indian banks isn’t the physical branch anymore, but the customer and employee experience. The benchmarks for service aren’t rival banks, but leading e-commerce platforms, streaming services, and super-apps that deliver seamless and hyper-personalised experiences.

Newer generations of consumers expect their banks to provide consistent service across all channels (e.g., mobile, web, in-person). They want personalised recommendations and actionable insights to improve their financial health. In fact, 46% percent of consumers – including 55% of high earners – would stay with a provider that offered excellent customer experience even if they raised their rates or fees.

For banks to win in this era, a new operating model is required – one that focuses on intelligent and connected relationship banking.

What customers and employees really want

Today’s customers, most of whom are digitally native and accustomed to hyper-personalisation, have a clear mandate for financial institutions:

• “Know me, not just my account”: Banks are expected to have a single, unified view of the customer’s entire financial life. Why should the customer have to submit KYC documents for a new credit card when they’ve held a savings account for a decade? Every interaction the customer has with the bank must be guided and informed by their previous conversations and transactions.
• “Advise me proactively”: Customers want a financial partner, not just a service provider. They’re looking for proactive and value-adding financial advice –  perhaps an alert indicating that their fixed deposit could earn a better rate; or, a pre-approved loan offer when their transactions indicate a major life purchase; or, a suggestion to invest their idle funds.
• “Make my life simpler”: No more waiting in queues, filling in forms, or repeating the same information to different service reps. Customers demand effortless, ‘phygital’ journeys across touchpoints. That includes seamless digital onboarding combined with high-touch, intelligent human advice whenever needed.

Bank employees, too, expect better experiences. For too long, they have:

• Been held back by legacy systems and archaic processes. 
• Had to navigate a maze of disconnected applications, spending more time on manual data entry than on advising clients. 
• Lacked an actionable 360-degree customer view to have meaningful, high-value conversations.

All these challenges lead to missed opportunities and employee frustration. Salesforce Financial Services Cloud helps bridge these gaps. It replaces legacy systems with a unified platform that offers complete visibility into customer data, while also automating end-to-end processes. As a result, teams are able to respond faster to customer needs, and build more meaningful relationships

The blueprint for innovation: Three steps to intelligent banking

Here’s what financial services providers can do to not just meet, but exceed customer expectations:

1. Unify customer journeys on a single platform 

Data silos are often the biggest barrier to personalisation. Customer data ends up scattered across core banking systems, loan-origination platforms, and new-age investment apps.

The solution is a single source of truth. A platform like Salesforce Data 360 connects data across departments, systems, and touchpoints to create a 360-degree view of the customer and their household.

See how Kotak Mahindra Bank powers unified, omni-channel customer experiences on Salesforce

2. Embed AI-powered intelligence everywhere

 Once data is unified, it can be used by banks to actively power AI. 

Einstein AI can be embedded into every workflow to enable ‘segment-of-one’ personalisation. It empowers relationship managers with next-best-action suggestions, helping them identify customers at risk of attrition, while also serving up the hyper-relevant product recommendations that customers now expect. 

See how Bajaj Finance Limited Auto Finance wheels in faster, easier lending journeys with Salesforce

3. Automate at scale for speed and efficiency

Automation and agentic AI can radically reduce the cost-to-serve, while freeing up employees for high-value advisory work. Agentic AI alone could potentially lower banking operational costs by 20% or more. Early use cases have seen manual workloads reduce by 30% to 50%. 

Platforms like Agentforce equip banks with powerful AI agents that can automate tasks, optimise processes, and deliver superior customer experiences.

Banks can also use tools like MuleSoft, and Salesforce Flow to automate the flow of information across multiple systems, while streamlining processes like digital customer onboarding, video-KYC verification, and loan origination. The result? Faster turnarounds, fewer errors, and greater customer trust

See how Hero FinCorp trims loan approval time from 2 days to 30 minutes with Agentforce

The trust factor: Innovating responsibly in the age of AI

Harnessing the power of AI and data carries an immense responsibility. Only 42% of customers currently trust businesses to use AI ethically. 

This is where India’s regulatory leadership provides a clear path forward. The RBI’s focus on data privacy, digital lending guidelines, and ethical AI isn’t a barrier to innovation; it’s a mandate to build a stable, trustworthy ecosystem.

At Salesforce, trust is the guiding principle behind all our innovation. We’re committed to ensuring transparency in how AI models make decisions. We’re also actively working to eliminate bias, and uphold the most rigorous standards of data privacy and security.

Become a Trailblazer in India’s banking revolution

The shift from impersonal transactions to intelligent relationship banking is the competitive reality of today. The banks that will thrive in this new era are those that place the customer relationship at the absolute centre of their strategy – powered by a unified platform, trusted AI, and scalable automation. The technology to build these valuable and lasting relationships already exists.