Union Bank Plans Retail Servicing At Par With Private Banks
Union Bank of India (UBI), which is going to come out with its first public issue this month, plans to modernise its retail servicing making it at par with private and foreign banks.
With a stress on massive computerisation with services hired from giants such as Infosys and Wipro, the bank also is going to launch various services, including multi-branch banking facility for its customers.
It also has targeted to start over 250 ATMs in next one year, while services such as internet banking and a full-fledged tele-banking services are to be unveiled, shortly. "Along with the idea of multi-branch banking, which will be estimated within about 500 top branches in the country in the first phase, we are also coming up lots of services, basically targeting retail customers," M Venugopalan, executive director, said.
"Recently we tied up with India's top two firms in information technology, Infosys and Wipro for their services to develop core banking solutions, while another major player in the field of business solution, KPMG also has been retained to work for us," said Venugopalan, who visited Ahmedabad on Wednesday to speak about the forthcoming public issue.
Wipro will provide its hardware support, while Infosys is assigned to take care of the software part of the technical upgradation of the bank. Union Bank is also planning to introduce mobile-banking for its customers in selected branches.
Of the 2,023 branches in India, 1,304 branches already have been computerised, covering for nearly 83 percent of the bank's business and the bank proposes to computerise 220 branches during the current fiscal year.
"Already 25 VSATs have been commissioned under the RBI's network, the INFINET. The treasury operations have been brought under negotiated dealing system operations and SWIFT facility for international financial messaging is available in 42 branches having international business, facilitating worldwide fast remittance of funds and information," said the executive director.
"We are going to provide the best services to our customers and that will be at par with private and foreign banks operating in the country. This way, we will be able to retain our success, in facts and figures," he added.