Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Monday, Mar 14, 2005
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Monday, Mar 14, 2005 |
|
|
|
|
|
Money & Banking
-
Information Technology CUB to install 30 more ATMs M. Ramesh
Chennai , March 13 A BANK putting up a few ATMs is no big deal. But City Union Bank's ATM initiative is different — in scale. The Kumbakonam-based bank currently has seven ATMs; and in the next two months, it plans to install 30 more. Why this sudden ATM spree? "It is not sudden," says Mr S. Balasubramanian, Chairman and CEO of the bank. He said the bank's earlier plan was to install 35 ATMs by March. But the process of installation of ATMs was delayed because the bank thought it fit to have the networking systems in place, so that when the ATMs come into being, they are all networked. The ATMs are a part of the bank's Rs 20-crore IT initiative, which includes networking 50 of the bank's 135 branches by September, using the `Quartz' software of Tata Consultancy Services. Asked of the experience with the ATMs the bank already has, Mr Balasubramanian said that some machines in Chennai got about 50-60 transactions a day. However, he said, the viability of each machine is not central to the issue. Mr Balasubramanian also pointed out that the costs of the machines were coming down and, over a period of time, the transactions would also improve. "When we started the exercise, ATMs cost was about Rs 15 lakh each. Now, there are ATMs for even Rs 2.5 lakh," he said. In an article in `SBI Monthly Review', Mr P. Siva Rama Prasad, Chief Manager-Business Process Reengineering Project, SBI, Mumbai, calculates that the monthly costs of a teller and an ATM are roughly the same — around Rs 60,000 (taking the cost of the ATM at around Rs 6.5 lakh and the total cost of installation at Rs 12 lakh). Mr Prasad reckons that the teller will handle about 2,000 transactions a month, at which level the cost per transaction is Rs 30. On the other hand, if an ATM gets 200 transactions a day for 20 days a month, the cost per transaction is only half that of a teller transaction.
Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page
|
Stories in this Section |
|
The Hindu Group: Home | About Us | Copyright | Archives | Contacts | Subscription Group Sites: The Hindu | Business Line | The Sportstar | Frontline | The Hindu eBooks | The Hindu Images | Home |
Copyright © 2005, The
Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of
this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of
The Hindu Business Line
|