IOB's core banking system caught in technical glitch

Also customers were not able to withdraw money from its ATMs since updation of transaction was not working

The Core Banking System (CBS) of Indian Overseas Bank (IOB) was affected on Monday due to “complex technological malfunction,” restraining the banking services to its customers.

While the transactions were carried out to the extend using the Saturday balance, IOB Chairman and Managing Director M Narendra said that a technical glitch following the Annual Maintenance of the system and the works to take more back up on Sunday, said Narendra.

This has affected the core banking services and the ATM services of the Bank to an extend.

“There was some problem related to the annual maintenance and taking the back up, which was carried out on Sunday. It is yet to get complete recovery. They are trying to get it done by tomorrow,” Narendra. The Bank has 3,000 branches and a little over 2000 ATMs.

“We have informed all our branches to give the services to the extend required through the last Saturday balance,” he said.

Similarly, the customers of IOB were not able to withdraw money from the IOB ATMs, since the updation of the transaction was not working. However, the IOB customers could redeem money from the ATMs of any other Bank and the customers of other banks could withdraw money from IOB ATMs.

Meanwhile, the Bank has appointed Ernst & Young as consultant to shift its Core Banking System (CBS) from an individual platform to Oracle base, said Narendra.

It has to issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) and select a suitable vendor to change to the new version of core banking. It would take around 18-20 months after selecting the vendor, to shift to the new CBS platform. At present, the Bank is running the CBS on an in-house platform.

It may be noted that Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked the Indian Overseas Bank (IOB) and some other banks to shift from its existing Core Banking System (CBS) platform to an Oracle based platform as part of integrating data from various banks through an automated data flow system.

Since most of the banks are on Oracle platform, the rest of the banks were asked to migrate, said an official from IOB during May, 2012. A few banks including IOB, Canara Bank and Syndicate Bank were using individual platforms at the time.

This came at a time when IOB was planning to go for a joint venture with IT firms to sell its in-house softwares to other Banks. The Bank freezed its JV plans with the RBI recommendation, but is still considering options to capitalise on the softwares developed by it.