We are the BTV generation whose only choice of TV series or programmes were the ones the channel aired. We had no option of flipping channels and we would rather enjoy whatever came our way. We had to wait for a favourite programme to be aired on a specific day of the week and that also at the designated time only. This is the story of our childhood and early youth.

It was not until the 1980s that the video cassette recorder made its way and our movie-watching options expanded a bit but certainly under due restrictions. But for adults even, options were limited only to the availability of the choices at the video rental points offering bad prints running at the very high demand for relatively new releases.

With time, our choices expanded with the advent of modern technology. We could first watch Doordarshan India for a few hours in the evening by fixing our external TV antennas with a lot of 'Macgyver-ish' tech improvisations. This was followed by the rise of dish antennas in the homes of the elite class.

Later, cable TV graced our homes with limited options of Hindi and English channels, which itself was a huge shift in the late 1990s and afterwards wherein we also started having private local TV channels offering a variety of programmes.

Our children, on the other hand, are millennials who have a hundred different entertainment options at their fingertips: movies, series, documentaries, news or sports. Over the last few years, with the aggression of internet and its total ruling over our lives and devices, we are now having over the top (OTT) platforms offering thousands of movies and series and documentaries as well as sports-related content—whenever we like to watch and across all our devices.

Just imagine the shift: these OTTs like Netflix give one abundance of choices from different genres of movies and series that they think match the individual audience's taste and preference. They do it by applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Machine Learning (ML) amongst all the millions of customers they have across geographies. But none of us feels like a part of the mass; rather, we feel very special because of this personalised approach.

It comes with a very customised and personalised offering. Every time we switch on the app it makes us feel not only special but at times exhausts us to go over the shows that we have on our watch list. It feels great to see that without asking many questions or being intrusive at all, OTTs like Netflix understand a part of us so well by just applying AI and ML.

The application of this personalised approach can be very effective in the banking sector. If we take a look at the contemporary banking offerings within the retail banking space alone, we would see that there is ample room for improvement.

Except for taking deposits for different tenures and offering attractive rates at times, there has not been any material change over the past 50 years in terms of product offering. Similarly, when it comes to loans, we have been hearing about either personal overdrafts or personal loans for ages.

Many banks have introduced relationship managers (RM) following the foreign bank model for high net worth customers and even in those cases, the RMs have been busy chasing deposits or offering plain vanilla loans through differentiated pricing only coupled with a bump up in status in the form of airport lounge facility, occasional gifts and invites to parties especially held for a handful of them.

While the country is full of millennials and the middle class has expanded with a higher purchasing power capacity, all of these 60-odd banks have not been able to offer personalised or customised offerings for each unique client that bank with them. Though the banks have had most of the data about each of their customer—second only after the telecom operators in terms of data availability—, none has been able to leverage this, understand each customer separately, and offer uniquely.

A majority of the banks are earning hefty profits year after year by riding on these millions of customers who keep their hard-earned deposits with them or borrow some "One Size Fits All' kind of loan products, without ever trying to know the need or preferences of each.

We, as a customer, do not get the offer of a unique proposition based on our lifestyle choices, preferences or needs, because a majority of us do not have dedicated RMs who would know us or try to know us individually. It is still like BTV days, in this respect wherein I walk in and stand or wait in a queue to be served and that is also within a limited time because the branch official has plenty to serve. It is like the increased number of private channel days wherein we have plenty of banks but not many understand my priority and personal choices and offer programmes according to that.

Today's millennials, who make up around 60 per cent of the total adult population in Bangladesh, listen to music on Spotify and iTunes, which also offer customised playlists based on the genre of music of each individual's liking. Banking in that respect has not changed much in line with the demographic change that the country has gone through over the past five decades.

Naturally, the question that comes to one's mind is whether it is the scenario all around or unique in Bangladesh? This was a global scenario a few years back when the words 'Fintech', 'Data' made their debut. The UK and the US led the evolution wherein a few Fintech companies emerged as 'challenger' or 'neo' banks.

Meantime, China's Alipay brought in accelerated speed to this and elevated it to a different level than others. These 'Digital/Challenger/Neo Banks' have brought in a total change in the ways traditional banking has been running for ages.

The most significant change is the personalisation of each service and product that a bank has to offer. Even if one has a paltry balance in the account, they can enjoy the most personalised understanding from the bank, which radically challenged the ways of banking, and that also at a very minimal cost being incurred by the bank.

In Bangladesh, it has only been in the recent past and that also after strong tremors being felt after almost a decade from the rapidly rising wallet usage by the masses that traditional banks (handful only though) have initiated digital onboarding in order to begin their frictionless personalised journey for a customer.

Digital know your customer (KYC), or eKYC, was also introduced by a leading digital service provider, Nagad. The model is now being followed by many banks meaning that they have been followers, not innovators in our market.

What is also surprising is that all the banks that have introduced eKYC for their customer onboarding have made this through a separate app that again does not provide the Netflix/Spotify kind of service that we were talking about.

Today's world is about app operations and doing everything within that single app and not letting customers leave that environment, rather offering all they need within that app for retention. This is called the 'Super App' approach. Some apparent "digitally savvy" banks in town are providing digital services to customers through different interfaces or apps for different offerings. This actually is far from being what super apps services should be like. And we have not even touched the tip of the iceberg that digital innovation can offer for banking.

There is sufficient room to transform and modernise the existing banking ecosystem in the country. While there are ample challenges that legacy banks are struggling to overcome, the need for innovation and true digitalisation has become the need of the hour and something the banks and regulators should strongly focus on. With the changing demographic shift, it is time for us to change the way we bank. Digital transformation is the only way forward.   

The author is an economic and financial analyst.