Indian Overseas Bank has finalised plans to hook-up about 340 branches spread across five cities - Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Chennai and Bangalore. As a first step, the bank recently awarded a turnkey contract to the city-based HMA Data Systems for establishing connectivity between 26 of its branches in New Delhi.
The bank has set this fiscal year-end as the target for completing the inter-connectivity of 170 branches in the five cities. It is learnt, another 170 branches will be added to the network later. The inter-connectivity of the branches will make the Indian Overseas Bank one of the first few public sector banks to provide the `anywhere banking' facility.
This facility will initially be available to the bank's account holders in Delhi. The bank hopes to provide its customers access from any of the five metros before March, 1999.
In another development, the Bank of India has commissioned HMA Data Systems to do a pilot project of linking five of its branches in Mumbai for its point of sales Mastercard operations. The Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank has also commisioned HMA Data Systems to link-up two of its branches to Mumbai's fledgling shared payment network system (SPNS) of `Swadhan' automatic teller machines (ATM).
"Only 2000 of a total of 60,000 bank branches in India are computerised. Of this very few are actually inter-connected. There is a tremendous potential for branch networking," HMA Data Systems' managing director Harish K Murthi said. The company new technology package for inter-branch connectivity,TBA starSWITCH, is compatible with most branch automation softwares available here today. "Unlike the conventional method of remote login connectivity that some public sector banks have tried unsuccessfully in the past, our product employs a new client-server mail switching technology," HMA Data Systems technical director, Sunil R Udupa, said.
Under the remote login system, the IT systems of bank branches talk to each other directly creating problems like security and excess traffic.
On the other hand, under the message switching technology, the TBA starSWITCH acts like an comunication exchange, between various branches.
According to HMA Data Systems, setting up connectivity between approximately 25 branches will cost nearly Rs 1.25 crore under the message switching technology. Other value-added services like internet banking, telebanking, debit cards etc can be added on to the message switching network with relative ease, the company added.
