India post payments bank

I’d once written about India Post Payments Bank, after a visit to a post office, and wondered if it will actually help foster financial inclusion. Now that the bank is about to launch, it seems to be doing some interesting thing, and mostly in terms of the intermediary it will be.

Being a payments bank, IPPB can only take deposits, and not give loans. It is trying to build a platform where it will simply act as a distributor for loans, and different lenders can make use of its customer transaction data and lend to its customers.

Also, since payments banks can only invest their deposits in government securities, the “float” is limited by the difference between the yield on such securities and the interest offered to depositors. Competitive pressures mean that the latter needs to be high, resulting in a thin float. Consequently, a payment bank needs to make money on payments and selling third party products such as investments insurance.

A recent interview with IPPB CEO Ashok Pal Singh gives some interesting pointers about how the bank might go about this. Firstly, the bank will dispense with the investment+insurance products, and will sell pure unbundled life insurance. The logic is that since the clientele is likely to be the hitherto unbanked, they will not be able to understand complicated products, and there is a high chance of misselling. By restricting product choice to those that are highly unlikely to be missold, the bank can ensure customer protection.

Similarly, in case of mutual funds, distributors have an incentive to recommend funds with high fees since they also tend to offer higher distributor commissions. Again, given IPPB’s clientele, the chances of mis-sale are high, and so the bank has decided to sell only index funds!

This is remarkable since index funds have hitherto been non-starters in India. Benchmark Mutual Fund had managed to establish a market, but a series of acquisitions has meant that the market hasn’t really taken off. Most financial advisors in India swear by actively managed funds. So a bank, however small, announcing that it will only sell index funds can give a massive boost to that market!

Apart from selling “simple” products such as term life insurance and index funds, the way the bank is going about the process is also interesting. Rather than tying up with a single provider of these products (as most other banks have done), IPPB plans to take the “broker” route and distribute products from different asset managers and insurers. This ensures that the rates remain competitive, though it is natural that the end salesperson might choose to sell products with the highest commissions/incentives. Nevertheless, with the products being inherently simple, the rates to the end customers are still likely to be competitive.

After over a decade of slumber, the RBI licensed a few (limited) banks last year. It is interesting to see the kind of diversity this new set of licensing has unleashed. Again goes to show that removal of barriers to entry can result in significantly better markets!

During his last few speeches, former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan kept mentioning how full-service bank licenses will be soon “put on tap”. The sooner that happens, the better it is for Indian banking customers.

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