'Indian banks must invest more on technology'

Indian banks' IT investments will turn skewed if tech investments in branches fail to match that of the other customer banking modes, speakers at the Banking Technology Conference opined.

Technology in over 40 per cent of the bank branches in the country were obsolete despite an overwhelming majority of customers still preferring branch banking to other advanced forms, they said.

Merwin Fernandes, vice-president and global head (sales and marketing banking business unit), Infosys Technologies, said that the technology investments by banks were just a shade of the western banks.

"For instance, India's largest private sector bank earmarked just about five to 10 per cent of the comparable spend by its similar-sized peers abroad," he said.

"However, the difference narrowed down to adaptive changes over technical, as it would ensure real time benefits in turnaround times, customer service and cost reductions. The key to technology-derived growth was process innovation and not mere product innovation. Process innovation would leapfrog the entity over the competition by at least a year," he added.

He emphasised the need to look ahead and invest in technologies that would check hackers and spoofers.

The increased use of the web for transactions will not just make it accessible to customers but also to such intruders. With around 40 per cent of such activities emanating from internal networks, banks should prop up authentication systems from traffic origin point to termination. At present, banks rely on a more conventional point of actual transaction and access check, they said.