State-owned Indian Bank, which recently completed a merger with Allahabad Bank, said it has sharpened its focus on digital transformation this year.
“In the current financial year our focus is on digital transformation to offer seamless customer experiences across all digital delivery channels,” said the bank’s chief technology officer Deepak Sarda. “It includes revamping our IT operating model and enabling API banking,’’ he added.
Globally, banks are opening up APIs (application programming interfaces) or communication tools for software applications to fintech firms or third parties to help offer seamless services to customers.
Complex transactions
“In the next decade, technology will play a big role in mutating the DNA of the current banking model followed by most banks. Technology will further evolve to support complex banking transactions and processes,’’ Mr. Sarda observed.
According to him, banking as a service (BaaS) platform is expected to open new revenue streams for banks. One of the key monetisation strategies for BaaS include charging for the usage of fintech services, thereby improving the CASA (current account, savings account) share for banks.
He said Indian Bank would further strengthen its IT infrastructure and ensure optimum utilisation of technologies and systems deployed. The bank has also set up artificial intelligence-driven Bots to create virtual branch interaction.
“During amalgamation, we upgraded our IT Infrastructure to the latest technology, including moving the core workloads to IBM Power 9 processors.”
Indian Bank and IBM have over a decade of relationship that started with Indian Bank using IBM Power Servers and storage for their core banking solution.
The bank has implemented network technology in its data centre (Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure) that supports scalability and provides throughput to handle the load for the next 5-6 years.
Private cloud
It also implemented private cloud with the capability to fulfil urgent IT Infrastructure requirements with a turnaround time of less than an hour. To strengthen its technology, the bank has also been hiring.
“The technology landscape is changing more rapidly than ever before,” he said. “To ensure that we have specialists across the new technology areas, especially in new-age technologies, we have been hiring resources to bridge any gap that existed,’’ he added.