Public sector lender Central Bank of India signed up a five year outsourcing agreement with an IT major Wipro, for its seven sponsored regional rural banks.
Under the agreement, Wipro would provide state-of-the-art, technology-driven, core banking solution for seven sponsored Regional Rural banks. One of them, Uttar Bihar Gramin Bank is the biggest RRB in India and had a large presence in Bihar, according to a release.
The engagement is of vital importance to Central Bank of India, in order to achieve its objective of financial inclusion and bringing low cost and efficient banking services to the rural masses. The Centralised Core Banking Project is expected, to facilitate efficient internal operations for the seven Regional Rural Banks. It is also expected to provide the competitive edge, by enabling regional rural banks offer innovative products and services at optimum costs.
The Core Banking project, would integrate 2,000 sites, which included branches, extension counters, satellite offices, regional offices, head offices and back offices in a phased manner. The solution would also offer alternate delivery channels like, Internet Banking and Mobile (including SMS Alerts) Banking.
Wipro, with its strong practices in governance, process excellence and integrated service delivery, will deliver business-IT alignment, by deploying and implementing the critical Core Banking Solution and the identified delivery channels, seamlessly. Wipro will also setup, a 24-hour centralized Helpdesk facility for the project covering applications, Data Center, networks, security and end user systems.
Commenting on the agreement Central Bank of India CMD S Sridhar said, ‘The rural customer of the RRB will receive superior customer experience from the RRB, and fast efficient systems will enable alignment with the shared business vision of Central Bank of India and the Regional Rural Banks sponsored by the Bank.’ The software has been provided by Infosys Ltd, using Finacle along with other standard products such as ALM, Govt. Business, Internet, ATM, EMS,and AML etc. With this, RRBs of Central Bank of India will be in compliance with statutory and Regulatory requirements including MIS. The contract is the outcome of a competitive bidding process which attracted several global and Indian IT majors. In a keenly contested deal, Wipro emerged as the preferred partner for the outsourcing deal spanning five years.
Earlier, last week, Wipro signed a seven year Total Outsourcing contract with five RRBs sponsored by UCO Bank, a leading Public Sector Bank, for implementing a Core Banking Solution (CBS) across 803 branches of the sponsored RRBs. The contract with Central Bank is the second in the series of wins for Wipro, related to driving financial inclusion through Regional Rural Banks.
The seven sponsored Regional Rural Banks were, Uttar Bihar Gramin Bank with 865 branches, Satpura Narmada Kshetriya Gramin Bank with 347 branches, Uttarbanga Kshetriya Gramin Bank with 119 branches, Vidarbha Kshetriya Gramin Bank with 96 branches.
Ballia-Etawah Gramin Bank with 138 branches, Surguja Kshetriya Gramin Bank with 85 branches and Hadoti Kshetriya Gramin Bank with 84 branches.
Having total number of 1,734 RRB branches, all its RRBs are profitable. Migration of the branch of all RRB shall be completed by September 2011, as committed to Regulatory Authority the release said. UNI.
Source:http://www.indlawnews.com/Newsdisplay.aspx?84f7d57e-bb9b-4617-bd9e-a8cee52b520a
