A day after United Bank of India (UBI) blamed software sourced from Infosys for wrong classification of bad loans, the IT company today issued a statement quoting a senior bank official to say there were "no inherent deficiencies."
"We would like to clarify that there are no inherent deficiencies in Finacle. The version of the NPA tool currently used at UBI needed certain additional customisations to meet our specific needs, which are feasible and are being addressed now," UBI Executive Director Deepak Narang said in a statement issued by Infosys.
"We regret any miscommunication or misconception created otherwise," he said.
According to Infosys, Finacle's NPA (non-performing assets) module has been adopted by leading banks across India and is running successfully.
"No bank has raised any issues regarding the performance of Finacle's NPA module," it said.
Yesterday, UBI had said "the Finacle system has inherent deficiencies to correctly identify NPA in certain categories of borrowers like KCC, restructured account, overdraft account continuously overdrawn for more than 90 days, ECGC covered account, etc.
"The generation of NPA through system in September and December 2013 has given rise to a large number of standard accounts shown as NPA and NPA accounts shown as performing assets," it had said.
"We, therefore, clarify that wrong NPA classifications is a result of the deficiencies in the software used by the bank and the challenge of checking each asset classification manually, particularly in small accounts, rather than any intentional intervention at any level to hide NPA," it had said.
Kolkata-based UBI's gross NPAs rose 188.3 per cent to Rs 8,546 crore, an addition of Rs 5,582 crore, at the end of December. It had Rs 2,963.8 crore of bad loans on March 31, 2013.
The gross NPAs of the bank had risen to Rs 6,285.89 crore at the end of September 2013 from Rs 2,417.73 at the end of the second quarter of previous fiscal, an increase of Rs 3,868 crore.
Following the rise in NPAs, the RBI had ordered a forensic audit by a firm, which has submitted its report to the central bank.
