“The synergy that finance and technology have, they work as a catalyst for multiplying, and fundamentally changed, how value is created, distributed, and scaled,” Jain said.
He said technology is changing finance across several dimensions at the same time, including by lowering the cost of providing financial services. The productivity of the financial sector, he added, has a wider economic impact.
“A more productive financial sector contributes immensely to productivity of the whole economy,” Jain said.
Jain also pointed to the growing role of artificial intelligence in financial decision-making. He said the combination of human creativity, judgement, empathy, ethics and purpose with the speed, scale and precision of AI and digital agents could unlock possibilities that neither could achieve independently.
AI, he said, is moving beyond simply processing information faster. It is increasingly being used to interpret information, identify patterns, make predictions and support decisions — capabilities that could be particularly consequential for finance.
Data emerges as another factor of production
Jain said capital, labour and technology have traditionally been the key inputs into financial intermediation, but data is increasingly emerging as another factor of production.
For data to create greater value, he said, it needs to move through several stages — from being available and accessible to being consented, interoperable and contextual.
The evolution of digital infrastructure has already changed how financial services reach customers. Jain pointed to digital identity as one example, enabling financial services to reach people in ways that would have been difficult to imagine a decade ago.
Distributed technologies are also reshaping parts of market infrastructure, he said.
The comments come a day after RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra said fintech had fundamentally reshaped the architecture of Indian finance over the past decade, taking banking from the branch to the hands of citizens and making financial inclusion a lived reality for hundreds of millions of Indians.
Speaking at GFF 2026 on Tuesday, Malhotra said fintech had connected India’s vast and diverse population to formal finance faster and more affordably, while improving customer experience and efficiency across financial infrastructure.
“In the last decade, fintech has fundamentally reshaped the architecture of Indian finance. It has taken banking from the branch to the hand of every citizen,” Malhotra said.
He said a shopkeeper in a small town, a farmer in a remote village and a young professional in a metro city can transact, save and borrow through the same digital rails, including the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Aadhaar-enabled payment systems and the Jan Dhan ecosystem.
“This is financial inclusion, not only as a policy aspiration but as a lived everyday reality for hundreds of millions of Indians,” Malhotra said, adding that fintech has helped bridge India’s vast and diverse population to formal finance faster and more affordably.
Jain also highlighted the RBI’s own use of technology in supervision and regulation, pointing to initiatives such as Daksh and Pravah as examples of how technology can improve supervisory and regulatory processes.
