Comments
Come April 1 next year, the customers of Punjab National Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce and United Bank of India will be able to walk into each other's branches to avail any of the 14 specified banking services from the first day itself.
The three banks, which are expected to be amalgamated from April 1 next year, have come to an understanding of what those 14 interbank services could be provided from different branches from Day 1 of the proposed amalgamation till complete technical merger of Centralised Banking Solution (CBS), Mukesh Kumar Jain, Managing Director & CEO of Oriental Bank of Commerce said.
“This is being finalised in discussion with Infosys (which is the technology solutions provider for CBS)”, Jain said.
For providing these services, a provision of signature verification from 3 different CBS sources is also provided, which is a significant customisation, sources said.
Read also: Merged entity of PNB, OBC and United Bank to become operational by next April
The 14 identified banking services include cash deposit; cash withdrawal; fund transfer; NEFT outward; stop payment of cheque; fixed deposit opening; recurring deposit opening; account statement; balance enquiry and passbook updation, it is learnt.
The three banks are also learnt to have appointed committees to discuss the modalities of amalgamation on CBS; Network; ATM Switch; internet/mobile banking services; data centre infrastructure’ information security; MIS and payments systems/ remittances besides few more areas of information technology, sources said.
It may be recalled that the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had in the end-August announced a megabank merger plan involving ten public sector banks and consolidating them into four.
More read: Will the big bank mergers work: An in-depth analysis
Under the plan, Punjab National Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce and United Bank of India will combine to form the nation’s second-largest lender; Canara Bank and Syndicate Bank will merge; Union Bank of India will amalgamate with Andhra Bank and Corporation Bank, and Indian Bank will merge with Allahabad Bank.
The consolidation exercise is expected to bring down the number of nationalised public sector banks to 12 from 27 in the year 2017.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.