XLRI hosts annual finance symposium GNOSIS 20

Jamshedpur: The Finance Association of XLRI (FINAX) recently hosted ‘GNOSIS 20’ – the 11th Edition of XLRI’s Annual Finance Symposium, a confluence of industry stalwarts and students to discuss the most pertinent issues & reforms in the finance sector. The theme of GNOSIS 2020 was “Ripples of COVID in the Financial Services Industry.” GNOSIS has traditionally been hosted in the country’s financial capital, Mumbai. For the first time, the event was conducted virtually owing to the pandemic.

The conclave focused on various issues that have come to the forefront during the pandemic and would influence the future of the Financial Services industry. There was a series of discussions on the economic scenario of India against the new normal, evolution of investment decision-making strategies in a post COVID world, changes in lending practices of banks and government bodies.

The conference started with a Special Guest session with Dr. Aruna Sharma, Former Secretary of Government of India. She emphasized increasing the pace of digitization in the Indian Financial sector, focusing on the transformation of the postal banking system, adoption of digital payments, and increasing financial literacy and cybersecurity among consumers and envisioning partnerships between MFIs, NBFCs, and Postal Banking systems to reach the remotest audience.

The keynote address of the conference was given by Amitabh Chaudhary, Managing Director of AXIS Bank. On Day-1 The conference witnessed two-panel discussions on ‘Economic Outlook: After the Dust Settles’ was participated by Dr. Madnesh Kumar Mishra, Joint Secretary, Department of Financial Services, Government of India; Mr. Abheek Barua, Chief Economist and Executive Vice President, HDFC Bank; Dr Soumya Kanti Ghosh, Group Chief Economic Advisor, SBI; Dr. Sachchidanand Shukla, Chief Economist, Mahindra Group; Dr. H K Pradhan, Professor of Finance and Economics at XLRI Jamshedpur as a panelist.

The second-panel discussion was on ‘Lending Parameters: The Changing of Guard’ featuring Mr. Abraham Chacko, Former Executive Director, Federal Bank; Mr. Bidhan Chaudhari, ex-President & COO, Jana Financial Services; Mr. S Ranganathan,

CFO, Edelweiss Financial Services; Mr. Koushik Chatterjee, Group Executive Director, Tata Steel; Mr. Ravi Krishnan, Deputy Executive Director, Moneycontrol.

Amitabh Chaudhry, MD, and CEO, Axis Bank said, “The Covid-19 pandemic has pushed the Indian banking sector to bring in more granularity in lending parameters and also look at new ways of lending. Banks are also increasingly relying more on real-time data and the banking system are continuously partnering with fintech companies for enhancing lending parameters. The data helps real-time decision making possible. ”