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Banking on technology

Throughout the NASSCOM'97 business conference, several speakers have cited tens of examples of how technology has reinvented companies in the West. But one example, close at hand in India, was never heard of.

This is the case of the Global Trust Bank, perhaps India's only fully wired bank. And since it has been ignored thus far, its own managing director, P C Narayan more than made up in the session on 'IT as a competitive weapon'.

T O D A Y

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The bank began operations in October 1994. And right from the beginning all the branches were completely computerised. Narayan revealed that, in fact, computers came on the premises even before the people to man them were hired.

"We began corresponding over electronic mail extensively from day one. We thought we could make it a paperless bank but found in a few days that we couldn't really do away with paper, so now it's a less-paper bank."

Narayan believes that if you can leverage technology to your needs, you can yield huge results and quickly too. Inter-branch transactions take 24 hours today, they plan to shorten that time to two minutes soon.

Some of the things they did right were to have an implicit belief in senior management IT. This is a strategy required to provide world-class service. "Our technology investment was driven by need," he said.

The Global Trust Bank is open from 9 in the morning to 8 in the evening and that's unusual as a lot of Indian banks down their shutters from 2 pm onwards to fill their ledgers etc. "Since technology helps us fulfill this need, we don't need to close at any time, so our customers can enjoy banking facilities till 8 pm," Narayan claimed.

Narayan said "We never move into an arena before checking it out thoroughly. For instance, we haven't gone into funds transfer or banking on the Net as the issues of security and internal control are still being formalised."

"But there's a whole lot you mustn't do," he cautions. "Never try to pioneer a technology. You automate the bank and not just a branch. You don't need an ISO certification, quality comes from within. You get technology at a cost. You can mix and match technology to suit your needs and finally, there is a need for tighter controls."

A case in point where Global Trust Bank succeeded in using technology as their cutting edge has been in Coimbatore. "We have two branches while our competitor has half a dozen. We have 22 staff, they have 200. But while their book size is Rs 960 million, ours is Rs 1 billion! It's only because of automation."

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