The Hindu Business Line : It's raining trouble for ATM users

The downpour on Tuesday seems to have taken its toll on bank customers not just in Maharashtra, but in other parts of the country as well. For instance, SBI's centralised core banking solutions (CBS) hub in Belapur, Navi Mumbai, stood affected by the floods, a senior SBI official told Business Line.

The CBS system is being rolled out in SBI and its associate banks such as State Bank of Hyderabad, State Bank of Travancore and so on, to help collapsed geographies. The system facilitates online inter-bank transactions of branches under the State Bank umbrella across different locations.

The Thurbe exchange, handling the main connectivity for SBI's operations across the country is also flooded, the SBI official said. He, however, denied that ATM operations were affected. The ATM channel is independent in its operation and has been running on Tuesday and Wednesday, the official said.

He admitted that banking transactions across the country were affected for "a period of time," but added that consumers were not affected. Back-up servers for the CBS system and the Thurbe exchange in Chennai had been activated, he said.

He refuted that some branches may have had to revert to manual transactions for a day. The CBS system has an offline facility enabled into it and banks could have used it, he added.

Meanwhile, other banks were also watching the developments with concern, as tomorrow too is a bank holiday. SBI has 5,000 ATMs and ICICI bank has 1,800 ATMs in the country.

Mr Hemant Kaul, UTI Bank's President - Retail Banking, said ATMs should not run dry because it is centrally monitored. When money in the ATM goes below the treasury limit, alerts are sounded out. However, torrential downpours could cause connectivity issues. He said in Mumbai there were a few cases of flooding in ATMs but matters have stabilised. UTI Bank has 170 ATMs in Mumbai and 1,700 ATMs in the country.

Mr Rahul N. Bhagat, senior HDFC Bank official, said that the loading of cash is independent of branch working hours and scheduled holidays as well as withdrawal trends are usually factored in with respect to cash requirements of ATMs. HDFC Bank has more than 1,200 ATMs.

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