Established in 1963, Kallappanna Awade Ichalkaranji Janata
Sahakari Bank is one of the leading cooperative banks in India. The
bank has 33 branches and 17 Automatic Teller Machines in
southwestern Maharashtra, India. The Bank has been at the forefront
of promoting small-scale and cottage industries, helping them
become self- reliant by providing financing at reasonable
rates.
The Challenge
Continuous deregulation has led to extreme competitiveness
in the Indian banking sector. The
growing competition has led to increased awareness among banks
on the role and
importance of technology-enabled banking.
Until 2009, the Bank
relied on three software applications
- Super Banker, Banker G and Bank Easy - to mange operations across
its 33 branches. Its existing distributed database setup and three
legacy systems led to several operational challenges:
- Time-consuming back office processing due to which staff
productivity was taking a hit
- Lack of standardization leading to delays
- Prolonged branch support cycle causing inefficiencies and high
cost of operations
With an aim to sustain their leadership in the region through
higher value creation for customers, better business
performance, enhanced customer service and
greater productivity, the bank sought a single technology
backbone.
The Core Banking Vendor Evaluation Process
To evaluate the core banking solution vendors, the bank
constituted a core committee comprising of functional heads
and top management executives. Detailed evaluation was
undertaken in terms of:
- In-depth product demonstrations
- Customer references
- Flexibility in generating customized reports
- Due diligence on vendors' reputation in the co-operative
banking segment
After a 360 degree evaluation, the bank partnered with
InfrasoftTech the market leader among CBS vendors for the
Cooperative Banking sector.
The Solution
The implementation of OMNIEnterprise
Core Banking Solution began in October 2009 and in nine
months all the 33 branches and 17 ATMs were connected to this core
banking platform. InfrasoftTech adopted a phased approach for the
implementation with three branches going live in the first month
itself.
The Benefits
The bank's business is growing by 16% year-on-year. Several
distributed operations are now centralized including: Start
of day & end of day
processes, change in interest charges on loans & deposits,
implementation of RBI & internal policies and compilation of
different returns like OSS.
While the bank
has grown substantially, the
employee ratio is maintained at the same level. Now,
the bank only recruits to fill
up vacancy created due to retirement. Banking customers
benefit from Anywhere Banking via its network of ATMs and
non-home-branches.
By introducing 'Teller System' at
the branches, ser vicing time
per customer has reduced
significantly. This has a direct impact of reducing the work load
on branches having high concentration of customers, especially
during the first ten days of the month.
On-boarding new customers is now faster with the facility to
conduct prompt KYC checks. Transparent operations and on-demand
generations of MIS reports for fact-based decision
making is aiding better control & monitoring of
bank's performance metrics, etc. Status of cash position on start
of day enables the management to take call on
the investments & borrowing of funds.
Through SMS banking account information is made available
on-demand to the customers. Internal utility of web server
increased substantially.
"InfrasoftTech's reputation of being the market leader in
co-operative banking segment was one
of the most important drivers for us to partner with
them. We have visibly seen business growth of 16% y-o-y, reduction
in customer servicing time OTC, transparency in operations and
on-demand generation of MIS reports for fact based decision
making," said PT Kumbhar, General Manager, Kallappanna Awade
Ichalkaranji Janata Sahakari Bank.
The Way Forward
The bank plans to expand in to new territories within
India. The bank's
organic growth has
led to aggressive inorganic growth ambitions as well is
at an advanced stage of acquiring a bank, pending RBI approval. The
bank plans to implement RTGS shortly and connect to other banks in
order to gain access to the third party ATM network of over 5000
ATMs.
Enabling Cost-Cutting Initiatives with eGRC
How Organizations have a solid eGRC approach, supported by the right technology, are better suited to manage a lean organization
Keep yourself updated on latest news and articles from the BFSI segment