Union Bank of India will invest Rs 1,000 crore to upgrade its information technology platforms this fiscal as it seeks to ensure that at least 50% of its business originates via the digital route by FY2025.

The public sector bank on Wednesday launched its super app, Union Nxt, which will provide to customers pre-approved personal loans, pensioner loans, Mudra loans, MSME loan auto-renewal services, and farmer loans auto-renewal services. This is part of its digital transformation project called ‘Union Sambhav’.

 “We are planning a digital bank within the bank which will lead to a lot of cost savings and increase business volumes as this will enable customers to do transactions on mobile without having to visit the branch,” Union Bank of India managing director and CEO Raj Kiran Rai told  reporters in a press conference.

Union Bank of India has tied up with more than two dozen fintechs to upgrade its digital offerings.

“A 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. Simultaneously, our mobile platform will also get updated and another part will be the data analytics,” said Union Bank of India executive director Nitesh Ranjan.

The move will attract more customers, generate digital revenues and optimise costs, he added.

The bank will 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 coming through a mobile channel and that is happening without any kind of reaching out effort to the customer,” said Ranjan.