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Explained: The Digital Banking App Controversy That Landed Bank Of Baroda In A Soup

The Bank of Baroda (BoB) has reportedly suspended more than 60 employees over irregularities pertaining to the onboarding of new customers to the bank’s digital app, ‘bob World’.

The suspended employees include 11 assistant general managers, who generally hold positions of area managers and zonal heads and oversee heads of over 25 branches, sources aware of the development told Moneycontr

What Is The Row About?

At the centre of the issue is a possible fraud while signing up customers for the internet banking app. In July, Al Jazeera and The Reporters’ Collective in a report said that employees at some branches of Bank of Baroda linked the bank accounts of customers with unrelated mobile numbers and signed them up for bob World. 

The mobile app, like most other banking apps, aims to offer customers an enhanced experience in digital banking in many aspects, including getting loans, savings, and investing, as well as features like bill payments and bus and hotel booking.

The report said that the bank’s employees, in order to meet the steep targets for the sign ups for the digital app, linked bank accounts which didn’t have any mobile numbers with the numbers of staff, sanitation and security workers. Following the registration, the employees deregistered the bank accounts from the app and then used the same mobile numbers to link another set of bank accounts.

To that end, one nodal officer was deputed at each branch to ensure the task was accomplished, the publication reported.

While Bank of Baroda denied the allegations then, it ordered an internal audit into the allegations.

It must be noted that in its Q4 and FY23 earnings statement, the bank said it had 30 Mn active users on the bob World platform, with a total of 53 Mn downloads. This grew from 19.6 Mn active users and 34 Mn downloads in the corresponding period of the prior fiscal year