Union Bank of India slots Rs 250 cr for tech

Plans rollout of core banking platform to cover all branches.

Union Bank of India has pegged the technology expenditure for the present financial year at Rs 250 crore. This includes the outlay on speedy rollout of core banking platform to cover the entire branch network by March 2007.

The bank plans to ramp up its technology capability including data warehouse. At present 1,500 branches on the Finacle, a core banking platform provided by Infosys, covering 90 per cent of its business.

"The Mumbai-based public sector bank's total spend on CBS is Rs 125 crore. We will bring additional 800 more branches under core banking by the end of this financial year," the bank's Chairman and Managing Director M V Nair told reporters today.

Recently, the bank set up a technology centre in Mumbai capable of managing six million transactions each day. The present volume of daily transaction is between 1.2-1.4 million, Nair said.

It plans to establish a dataware housing centre in Gandhinagar (Ahmedabad). The bank also expects to be ready with the mobile-based payment facility in the next 3-4 months.

Meanwhile, the bank has introduced an SMS banking facility on mobile phones. Through this facility, the customer will be able to get information on bank balances, cheque status and automatic alerts on debitcredit transactions.

At the nominal cost of Rs 120 a year, the customer will be able to keep constant track of the transactions in his or her account from any place where a mobile can be used.

On changing the face of the branch network, the CMD said "We are redesigning the branches. The back-office work would be moved out of branches. The clearing account opening activities would be centralised. These transformed branches will work as sales and services outfit."

This exercise is expected to release a large number of officials at branches involved in the routine work. Over 5,000 officers are going through reskilling for dealing with customers. This training would be imparted every quarter.

The bank is working on the concept of lobby banking in association with IBM, a technology company. The customer would would use ATMs and kiosks to carry out transactions.

And in case he or she still feels the need for human assistance for product information and other services, the staff would be available to assist customer. There would be a separate area for high networth individuals.

Currently, it is trying out the lobby banking concept at three branches. Based on the feedback, it will be extended to 10 branches and later scaled up to 100.