Reflecting on 2024, what were your bank’s major milestones from an operational perspective, and how did you achieve them? Conversely, what were the setbacks and challenges encountered along the way, and what measures were taken to surmount them?
2024 was a defining year for 360 ONE, marked by strong business performance, strategic expansion, and sustained resilience amid market fluctuations. Our shift to a recurring revenue model, introduced in 2020, provides financial stability and predictability, setting us apart in an evolving industry.
Our ultra-high-net-worth individual (UHNWI) business has always been our primary growth engine. India’s economic trajectory has created a favourable environment for wealth creation, and we are well-positioned to capitalise on this opportunity. The number of UHNWIs in India has been rising exponentially, and continues to grow. With our expertise and robust investment framework, our approach is deeply solution-oriented. We continue to focus on new client acquisitions and strengthening existing relationships.
By expanding beyond traditional tier one cities into tier two and tier three locations, we are broadening our reach and fortifying our market presence in promising segments. Rising markets in recent years have also led to increased activity in monetising assets besides inter-generational wealth transfer.
As one of India’s leading wealth and asset management firms, we are strategically positioned to capitalise on emerging market opportunities. Recognising the evolving needs of our HNW clients, we have established a dedicated team offering exclusive products and tailored solutions. Our recent strategic acquisitions — ET Money, one of India’s largest SEBI-registered investment advisors, and B&K Securities, a mid-cap brokerage house — are expected to significantly enhance our capabilities. These moves will broaden our footprint within the HNWI segment and strengthen our equity capital markets (ECM) offerings, enabling us to deliver superior value to our clients and stakeholders.
On the asset management front, we have witnessed robust gross flows across diverse investment strategies, strengthening client portfolios and our financial performance across market cycles.
Challenges in 2024 included economic fluctuations, with real GDP growth slowing from 7.2% in the first half to 5.4% in Q3, impacting corporate earnings and market sentiment. Despite this, our strong net flows and disciplined investment strategies have ensured resilience. At 360 ONE, our strength remains in a balanced approach — ambition with caution, innovation with discipline, agility with rigour — a philosophy that continues to drive our success.
What is the sweet spot for a bank’s cost-to-income ratio in the region, and how are banks tackling the cost side of the equation in Asia, whether relating to investments, real estate, or other operating costs?
The cost-to-income ratio is a critical metric for banks, but the ideal figure is not fixed, especially when factoring in the complexities of growth strategies. At 360 ONE, we are expanding our presence to emerging cities, which naturally involves a higher cost due to investments in talent, infrastructure, and local market penetration. In the last decade, India’s tier two and tier three cities have seen a surge in wealth creation driven by the growth of startups and an entrepreneurial ecosystem. These regions represent a significant opportunity for us. As demand for quality wealth management services increases, we position ourselves as the wealth manager of choice across these regions.
To support this, we are hiring experts who have an in-depth understanding of local markets, ensuring that we cater to the needs of investors nationwide. This geographical and segment-based expansion requires significant investment. Still, we view these costs as temporary dislocations — an essential outlay for being in the right place at the right time to capture future growth.
We’ve bolstered our teams in key areas, and these investments in talent and expansion led to a temporary increase of 3-4% in our cost-to-income ratio in FY2024. However, we’re confident that the returns will manifest over the next six-to-18 months as our teams drive business growth. We understand the importance of controlling costs but also recognise that certain investments are necessary to support long-term growth and maintain our leadership position.
How did your bank leverage and adopt technology regionally in 2024, and what is planned for 2025? What key metrics are employed to assess technological investments, and which specific investments have had the most significant impact on revenue generation and overall client experience?
While wealth management for UHNWIs in India continues to be a high-touch, relationship-driven industry, we strategically leverage technology as a key enabler to enhance operational efficiency, elevate client experiences, and empower our relationship managers. Strengthening our data and analytics capabilities remains central to our strategy, allowing us to integrate intelligence seamlessly across advisory services, operational processes, and product innovation.
From a client standpoint, seamless execution remains paramount. We have fully digitised transactions across portfolio management, alternative investments, and mutual funds, reinforcing our industry leadership in transparent and frictionless investing. Our open-architecture advisory model, powered by robust digital solutions, ensures clients receive highly customised investment strategies rather than cookie-cutter offerings. These advancements and our focus on scalable and intuitive digital interfaces reinforce our position as one of the most trusted private banks for UHNWIs and HNWIs.
Looking ahead to 2025, we will continue refining our technology stack to enhance client engagement and drive growth in the UHNWI segment. With India’s HNI population expected to increase further, we are strategically expanding our reach beyond Tier I cities while deepening relationships with existing clients. Our data-driven approach will further integrate artificial intelligence and predictive analytics, empowering RMs with actionable insights and strengthening client trust. By staying at the forefront of digital innovation, we remain committed to delivering superior investment experiences that align with the evolving needs of India’s growing wealth ecosystem.
Given the increasing sophistication of digital channels and other client-facing innovations, how do you maintain an equilibrium between high-touch client services and cutting-edge technologies?
We aim to integrate cutting-edge digital capabilities with the personalised approach that defines private banking and wealth management in India. While technology enhances efficiency, customisation, and scalability, the essence of private banking remains rooted in trust and deep relationships. Our tech-led strategy ensures that innovation enhances — rather than replaces — the human expertise our clients trust us with.
Our technology roadmap is built on three pillars: foundational excellence, operational efficiency, and transformational programmes. Foundational excellence refers to an “always on”, highly available infrastructure underlying all our services; it also encompasses high security, zero trust principles and constant monitoring of our attack surface and security posture.
Operational efficiency covers our Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) programmes and our application layers spanning engagement layer technologies, onboarding, front office, order management, and data technologies. We aim to offer our application users both depth and breadth of functionality that enables speedy and effective decision-making with the power of data.
A key example of transforming for speed and agility is evidenced in our cloud and data platform programmes. Our shift to the cloud has delivered remarkable efficiency gains, achieving 120x faster execution of stored procedures, a 3x reduction in costs and integration efforts through API-driven connectivity, and a 4x decrease in data anomaly risks. These enhancements allow our relationship managers to access and analyse client data faster and more effectively. These technology advancements have complemented and elevated high-touch engagement rather than dilute it. We have invested in both experimentation and adoption of generative AI capabilities. These have complemented and enhanced our performance. Generative AI for code generation, testing, and modelling has helped reduce effort, increase speed, and boost the accuracy of our outputs.
Operational resilience is at the top of private bank’s minds and cyber resilience has also moved up the agenda in recent years. How does your bank effectively manage third-party dependencies and enhance the operational resilience against the failure of third-party IT solutions?
With operational resilience as a top priority, we continue to strengthen our cyber security framework to manage third-party dependencies and mitigate risks associated with technology effectively. We leverage a distributed infra design to reduce locational and asset dependency. We operate with the principles of high availability — ensuring no single point of failure and maintaining high availability at all times across connectivity, network, server, and applications.
All critical assets, including databases, are governed by Privileged Access Management to prevent unauthorised access. All access is logged. To further safeguard sensitive information, we have implemented Data Loss Prevention (DLP) rules across email, web, and infrastructure like the network and servers.
Additionally, our cyber risk quantification platform provides a centralised view of vulnerabilities.
User awareness remains a critical component of our cyber resilience strategy. We have built a comprehensive cyber security training programme, ensuring full employee participation. The success rate in phishing simulations improved significantly, with an increase in suspicious communications reported. Employees undergo mandatory training to reinforce their awareness of cyber threats, preventing potential data or financial losses.
Role-based administration further enhances security by assigning administrators specific access levels, reducing exposure to unauthorised access. Our Security Operations Centre actively monitors and addresses cyber threat advisories, and we have also onboarded a regulatory platform that strengthens external threat management. Compliance with SEBI’s latest Cyber Resiliency and Cyber Security Framework is another focus area, with ongoing enhancements to monitoring processes and adopting advanced threat detection technologies. We have also significantly reduced breach likelihood; our SAFE (cyber risk quantification) score stands at 4.4 out of five.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has promises and challenges for the private banking industry. What are some of the AI use cases in your bank over the past year? How has AI been helping the bank to improve operational efficiency? What are some of the pain points banks need to overcome in AI implementation? What’s your plan for AI adaptations in 2025?
AI plays a transformative role at 360 ONE, significantly enhancing operational efficiency, decision-making, and personalisation in wealth management. Over the past year, we have implemented advanced AI-driven solutions across various dimensions of our operations, fundamentally optimising both internal processes and client interactions.
The development of our Securities Reference Data Hub — a first-of-its-kind platform consolidating extensive securities data from multiple sources, has created a single source of truth. This innovation significantly enhances data integrity, accelerates information distribution, and supports critical business functions, including Wealth Advisory, Portfolio Management Services (PMS), and asset management.
Internally, we have leveraged Intelligent Process Automation (IPA), Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and microservices extensively, equipping our relationship managers and bankers to optimise productivity. Our enhanced internal CRM and new Salesforce.com features facilitate seamless end-to-end client onboarding and transaction management, driving significant efficiencies across our operations. Moreover, our AI investments include machine learning algorithms in asset management to optimise distributor recommendations. Additionally, we leverage generative AI extensively for tasks such as code generation, data enrichment, and enhancing analytical capabilities, further strengthening our operational excellence. Setting up our comprehensive data platform has infused greater intelligence throughout the business, enabling seamless integration across our various digital, technological, and AI-driven solutions.
Despite notable advancements, AI implementation in private banking faces specific challenges around data security, model transparency, regulatory compliance, and the necessity of maintaining the explainability of AI-driven decisions. We proactively address these challenges by enhancing security frameworks, model governance, and compliance mechanisms.
In 2025, we aim to leverage predictive analytics for deeper investment insights further, enhance AI-driven personalisation, and expand automation to further strengthen operational resilience.
Our goal is to build a seamlessly integrated digital ecosystem in which technology, AI-driven tools, and digital platforms communicate effortlessly while always preserving the essential human connection that defines our approach to wealth management.
Technology companies eyeing the financial services sector have the potential to disrupt the industry. Are tech and fintech companies’ potential competitors or partners? How are partnerships between banks and tech companies reshaping the industry?
Rather than viewing tech and fintech companies as competitors, we regard them as valuable partners in shaping the future of financial services. As the landscape evolves, continuous learning and upgrading of our capabilities remain central to our strategy. These fintech companies typically serve distinct market segments, complementing our offerings. Our strategic acquisition of ET Money, a prominent fintech platform specialising in wealth advisory, specifically addresses this growing client base in the lower-ticket segment, enabling us to broaden our market reach effectively.