The Hindu Business Line : SBI-TCS venture to offer tech platform to small banks

THE technology venture, being promoted by State Bank of India in association with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), will soon open its platform for others in the banking sector.

The company, in which TCS has 51 per cent and SBI 49 per cent stake, is in the process of putting in place the technology infrastructure and negotiations are on with some co-operative and regional rural banks for making use of it, Mr A.K. Purwar, Chairman, SBI group, said here on Monday.

He told newspersons that the company would provide services such as data mining and data warehousing and "it is dedicated to the entire banking industry". It would be of help, especially to small banks with no technology platform of their own.

Mr Purwar, who was here to launch the "zero" balance savings bank account scheme of State Bank of Travancore (SBT), an associate bank of SBI, said the problems faced by the group in the area of core banking solutions would be sorted out soon. On the merger of the associate banks with SBI, he said all the associate banks were doing well in terms of business, profits and other aspects. In fact, there has been a virtual merger of the banks in many areas and it is only a matter of time for their actual merger.

Mr Purwar said because of the core banking network, SBI and the associate banks had been able to launch many new products and they would come out with more productsin the future.

He said six associate banks had been fully networked for core banking and all the seven banks would make the list by the second week of January.

One of the focus areas of SBI is self-help groups (SHGs) and the number of SHGs financed by the bank has gone up from around 1.7 lakh last year to nearly four lakh as of now. About 40 lakh people have been benefited and the recovery rate is around 98 per cent.

The SBT's new scheme is designed to provide banking facilities to the masses. There is no restriction of minimum balance for opening the account and the account can continue to be operational even with `nil' balance. The account holders will also enjoy ATM facility.

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