Finacle sniffs next wave of opportunities in RRBs

Tailor-made solutions ready, roll-out in two months.

After the commercial banks and cooperative banks, Finacle, the banking solutions arm of IT major Infosys Technologies is now bracing for prospects among the regional rural banks (RRBs) in India.

Finacle has developed special banking platform for rural banking which will be rolled out in the current quarter with a few RRBs on pilot basis.

The proprietary solutions which is having most of the features of its flagship Finacle Universal Banking Solutions platform, has been specifically tailored keeping in view the requirements of the RRBs, Haragopal Mangipudi, VP & business head, Finacle said.

“We are in the advanced stage of discussions with some RRBs to roll out the product on a pilot basis, and hope to get a few customers in the present quarter. Apart from bringing in the best practices of what we have been offering to commercial banks, the rural banking platform has been specifically configured to suit the requirements of RRBs since they do not have the product varieties and offerings that commercial banks offer,” said Haragopal.

Finacle is already leading the core banking solutions market in India with almost 65 per cent of the market share. The banking solutions provider has about 51 per cent installed base in the Asia Pacific region including India, followed by a 41 per cent installed base in Europe.

The core banking solutions market in India is almost saturated, with most banks already having gone live with core banking platform by various vendors including Finacle and iFlex. In this scenario, Finacle sees good opportunities in its rural banking solutions which will be similar to Finacle Bank-in-a-Box with best features of its solutions for large banks like scaleability, flexibility and information security. Finacle Bank-in-a-Box is a pre-configured and fully-integrated framework for banking transformation.

There are over 90 RRBs in India which are attached to the principal banks, but work as different legal entities. Haragopal said the whole commercial value proposition of the rural banking solutions was going to be the big one due to the fact that over 40 per cent of the population in India remains outside the banking system. “We do see that as an extension of our relationship. That is going to be the next wave of spending in the Indian banking industry,” added Haragopal.

Finacle is planning to start a branding exercise for the product in the coming months. The pricing of the product is expected to be lesser than the Finacle universal banking solutions meant for large banks with hundreds of branches. “This is a tailored targetted offering, and the pricing will be different from our universal banking solutions,” said Venkatramana Gosavi, regional manager — South Asia, Finacle.

He said, once proven in the home market, the company might take this to Latin America. “We first want to make it a success in the home market and then try elsewhere. We may launch this in Latin America. But this will take some time.”

During the quarter-ended June 30, 2008, Finacle recorded revenues of $45.53 million with a year-on-year growth of 51.9 per cent. The company signed two large customers in the last quarter including Spanish bank BBVA.