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Adith Charlie

Mumbai, Sept. 11 Technology company 3i Infotech will assist banks and financial institutions in reducing the processing time for various back office operations by setting up 255 new service centres in the semi-urban and rural parts of the country.

These centres — which will constitute a ‘hub and spoke’ model — will be manned by experts who will specialise in transactional services outsourcing related to processing credit cards, insurance applications, contact point verification, soft collections, cheque clearing services, reconciliations, etc.

For processing a housing loan, it takes around 8-10 days in the non-metro pockets of the country, 3i Infotech’s Chief Financial Officer and Executive Director, Mr Amar Chintopanth, told Business Line. “This is because a majority of banks in India manage these back office functions in-house. By outsourcing loan processing to our service centres, the turnaround time can be reduced to 3-4 days,” said Mr Chintopanth.

By the end of the current fiscal, the city-based firm is expected to spend up to Rs 25 crore for this endeavour. Currently, the company has 45 such centres that are operational. 3i Infotech is open to both direct investments (in these 255 centres) as well as adopting the franchisee route.

It has joined hands with some private sector banks, insurance firms and financial institutions for these services.

Once the hub and spoke model successfully takes off in India, 3i Infotech will replicate it in other developing geographies and industries. Going forward, the company also intends to offer credit verification services for telecom operators at the service centres.

The company sees scope for taking this hub and spoke model to China and other countries in Africa. Transactional services outsourcing currently account for 22 per cent of 3i Infotech’s revenues.

More Stories on : Business Models | Information Technology | Outsourcing

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