The Hindu Business Line : ‘Banks have to balance biz growth, tech changes’

Mumbai, Jan. 9 Banks must implement strong IT governance practices to ensure that that their technology projects do not adversely impact their performance, according to senior bank officials at Banknet’s “Fourth International Conference on Payment Systems,” held here on Wednesday.

Strong information technology platforms call for calculated and discrete measures from banks. “Banks are faced with two major risky propositions – the pace at which their businesses are growing and the pace at which technology changes,” according to Mr Ravikiran Mankikar, Chief Technology Officer, Shamrao Vithal Co-operative Bank. This makes it imperative for banks to have strong wraps of governance surrounding their IT practices.

IT Governance is a subset discipline of Corporate Governance focused on information technology (IT) systems and their performance and risk management. The rising interest in IT governance is partly due to compliance initiatives (Sarbanes-Oxley – US) and Basel II – Europe), as well as the acknowledgment that IT projects can easily get out of control and profoundly affect the performance of an organization.

Mr Pravir Vohra, ICICI Group Chief Technology Officer, is of the view that banks should measure the benefits of IT implementation on the metrics of the monetary outcome. “Many organisations measure deliverables of IT only when their IT infrastructure shows signs of failure, which could be dangerous for the bank,” he said.

Citing an example, Mr Vohra said that banks should do a feasibility study to understand the cost of doing transactions on their IT infrastructure vis-a-vis competitor banks.

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