South Indian Bank has introduced e-BG (Electronic Bank Guarantee) facility for its customers in partnership with National E-Governance Service Ltd (NeSL). It facilitates API-based paperless issue of bank guarantees, eliminating the need for physical documentation and record maintenance.
The bank issued its First e-BG favouring a leading public sector unit for an amount of Rs 4.57 crore through NeSL.
South Indian Bank’s customers can now procure e-BGs for beneficiaries on-board NeSL. Paper-based BGs involve stamping, signing and transferring the physical BGs, while e-BGs are stamped electronically, eliminating the need for purchasing physical stamp paper, printing the documents and physical signatures.
Murali Ramakrishnan, MD & CEO, South Indian Bank, said, “Digitisation is the core enabler for our vision. The issuance of an e-BG will reduce the turnaround time and contribute towards ease of doing business for our business customers. The benefits include faster processing time, convenience, cost-effectiveness, increased security, and improved tracking.”
Debajyoti Ray Chaudhuri, MD & CEO of NeSL said, “NeSL’s eBG has been developed in association with the Indian Banks’ Association, in response to banks’ requirements for a digital product, which could make the BG easily available to the beneficiary, without the need to go through the tedious process of verifying the authenticity of the same. NeSL’s e-BG is paperless and available in digital form to the beneficiary of an e-BG on registration on the NeSL’s e-BG portal. User registration is a simple, one-time process. NeSL’s eBG takes care of all the lifecycle events of the BG in a seamless and digital manner.
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The e-BG facility has numerous advantages over the prevailing system of paper BGs, which includes considerable reduction in TAT (turnaround time); the beneficiary can directly access the BG from the NeSL portal; it eliminates the need for physical movement of the BG contract documents; generation of contract document in a dematerialised and paperless form, etc.