Banking Is All About Deposit And Loans

Keyur Doshi is the CFO of Fincare Small Finance Bank. An MBA with specialisation in finance, he has over 20 years of experience in financial services. Doshi has played a vital role in managing legal compliance, financial and cost management and business planning for the entire group. 

His cost management initiatives have significantly added to the group’s bottom line. Doshi currently leads the teams for Finance, Accounts, Treasury, Financial Planning and Analysis for Fincare base-of-pyramid financial services business. 

In his own words, the banking business is all about taking deposits and providing loans. Money is the primary raw material. Therefore, the ‘finance strategy’ is core to the ‘business strategy’ of the bank. The bank has the vision to serve the unbanked and underbanked customer segments. 

These customer segments need instant loans and are looking for options which are superior to those available through informal sources such as money lenders etc. Micro loan providers such as Small Finance banks and NBFCs give access to the customer to formal finance, resulting in lowering of interest cost. The finance strategy is aligned to raising liabilities to ensure that such products can be offered seamlessly by the bank. 

With the expansion of the pool of liability instruments, the liability management strategy also evolved. Thus, planning end-toend activities, from fund raise to funds management is part of the strategy. The finance strategy is also peer benchmarked to ensure adoption of the best practices from mother banks. 

He f ur ther f e e l s t h a t i t is impor tant to have good alignment for a good strategy. He says that in order to ensure alignment, the finance strategy converted into an annual plan and then into quarterly, monthly and daily goals. These goals are communicated to relevant stakeholders, including Board, senior management, treasury and financial planning units to ensure alignment, ownership and accountability. These are then tracked and published on an ongoing basis and periodic reviews are conducted to check progress. The framework is such that each team member tasked as FPR (First Person Responsible) for a particular activity is able to plan their tasks and timelines in a manner aligned to meeting the unit’s objectives.