Union Bank launches super app 'Union Nxt', to invest Rs 1,000 crore in tech in FY23

The logo of Union Bank of India is pictured on the wall of its branch in Kolkata, India, April 11, 2017. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri - RTX3531T

Union Bank of India on April 6 launched its super app, Union Nxt which focuses on providing pre-approved personal loans, pensioner loans, Mudra loans, MSME loan auto-renewal services, and farmer loans auto-renewal services to customers.

The bank is looking to invest nearly Rs 1,000 crore in building and upgrading its digital technology in the present fiscal, as per the bank’s management. It has tied up with over a dozen fintechs to upgrade its digital offerings, the bank’s management told reporters.

“Large part of this investment will go into building a digital architecture which will be open and modular. On top of this, we will be building a digital lending platform so some part of this investment will go there, and simultaneously our mobile platform will also get updated and another part will be the data analytics,” said Nilesh Ranjan, executive director of the bank.

Further, the bank is likely to announce a slew of new digital projects going ahead and some of these include digital enablement of insurance, mutual fund, warehouse financing, GST cash-flow based lending, Tarun & Kishore Mudra loans, co-lending and pool buy-out, and providing housing loan and education loan online.

“The overall objective is to have 50% of the business originations coming from digital channels by 2025, we are already seeing early trends…today as I speak almost 15% of fixed deposit accounts are getting open through a mobile channel and that is happening without any kind of reaching out effort to customer,” Ranjan said.

Traditionally, the bank was onboarding, on average, 6,000 to 7,000 new customers on its mobile app; however, today the lender is adding more than 20,000 customers every day, Ranjan added.

The bank presently has 1.65 crore customers on its mobile app and aims to take the count to 2 crore this year, Union Bank MD & CEO Rajkiran Rai G. told reporters.

On asked what safeguards were in place to ensure data protection, Ranjan said while the bank partners with fintechs, all data that gets generated is stored with the bank’s servers and not the outsourced entity.