Bank of India has announced the third flagship conference Bankers Conference of The Indian Banks Association (BANCON) 2013, to be held in Mumbai on November 15 and 16, 2013.

The theme conference this year is “Bank of the future: Gearing up to meet the emerging environment.”

The conference will be attended by big names in the industry. While RBI governor Raghuram Rajan will deliver a special address, finance minister P Chidambaram will release the McKinsey report on ‘Reimagining banking in India.’ The global consulting firm has also conducted a survey in Indian banking titled “Bank of the Future” for IBA and BANCON 2013.

Speaking on the occasion on Wednesday, V R Iyer, chairperson and managing director, Bank of India said, “Against the backdrop of testing times being witnessed today by the banking sector, we anticipate a fruitful conference and hope to gain new insights during our interaction with the banking fraternity”.

She further said that the Indian banking sector has made progress over the last decade across metrics like improving access to banking products and services, maintaining stability during a tumultuous period, creating significant value for shareholders and supporting growth of the Indian economy. She added, “Though the extent of financial inclusion has increased by 30% and total return to shareholders (3 year CAGR) has grown by 70 percent during the past decade, the challenging macroeconomic situation of the last 3 years has led to decline in banking outcomes and outlined sharp differences in performance and capabilities across banks in the industry. Risk levels have increased as net NPA’s have risen by 55%. Value creation has reduced as a total return to shareholders has declined by 25% and credit growth has slowed down by 15% during the last years”.

Alok Kshirsagar, director, Mc Kinsey & Company said that the current challenging environment has highlighted sharp differences in performance and capabilities of banking players in the industry. He said that the best performing banks already have 40% active customers on internet and 10% on mobile. “There is also a 95% difference in adoption of digital channels across top and bottom performing banks. There is a 60% gap in gross NPA’s between the industry average and top performers which reflects the variation in underlying risk management capabilities across banks.”

He further added that with 65% of SME customers using non-bank sources for their borrowings banks have vast opportunities to prioritise digital channels in future. “Indian banks  need to enhance their risk management as at present less than 5% banks use both in house and external credit underwriting models for retail lending, a global best practise.”