Page 238 - DMGT303_BANKING_AND_INSURANCE

Unit 11: Innovations in Banking

Notes
 Vertical and horizontal evaluation process was performed by experts taking inputs
from all possible sources
The bank’s team mapped the capabilities of each system against the business requirements
and Finacle from Infosys was selected by the bank.

Solution Overview
Federal Bank decided to adopt a centralized architecture for better efficiency, more control
and for meeting challenges of the future. After a rigorous selection process, Federal Bank
decided to adopt innovative technology by procuring Finacle universal banking solution
from Infosys to fuel its retail core banking transformation initiative.
The solution was fully equipped to accommodate and build upon existing products that
the bank offered to its retail customers and empower the business to introduce futuristic
products as well. It promised to significantly improve the customer’s banking experience
and support it through various delivery channels like the Internet etc. A significant reduction
in time-to-compliance was another key solution differentiator.

The replacement exercise began with rigorous testing of the Finacle solution using a large
number of test cases, representing various types of retail transactions typical of Federal
Bank’s operational scenario. The setting up of the data centre and disaster recovery site in
accordance with international standards, in different seismic zones, was also planned and
executed.
Federal bank started an aggressive roll out of the system in the last week of April 2007.
Once the full-fledged implementation started, the bank surmounted the change
management challenges in human capital. The most important factor was getting the staff
to unlearn whatever they had learnt and the staff had to be motivated to assimilate the
benefits of migrating to a new environment, explore more of the new solution and draw
more from it.

Federal bank is an end-to-end solution provider for customers in a distributed system
through various channels such as ATM, telebanking, mobile alerts, e-mail alerts, electronic
bill payments, RTGS, NEFT and its flagship offering – anywhere banking. Federal Bank
identified 36 channels, which enabled the bank to run a centralized system even though it
was running on a distributed system; seamless integration of these entire channels was a
major focus during CBS implementation. The solution is designed with Oracle RDBMS
back-end; open architecture is developed and tuned on HP, Sun & IBM UNIX platforms.
Finacle solution came ready with almost all channel services. A major business challenge
was the seamless integration of these channels providing customers with uninterrupted
service even during the transition period. The technical team identified Finacle channel
integrator Connect 24 as the starting point for channel integration. Most of the FedSoft
legacy system was integrated with Financial Messaging Service (FMS) and an interface
was internally developed for communicating between Fedsoft and Finacle. Every channel
was integrated thought this interface. The scalability of internally developed interface
was remarkable when it handled end-to end transactions between FedSoft and Finacle.

Some Federal Bank channel features integrated, are listed below:
 Anywhere banking
 Mobile banking

 FedNet (Finacle e-Banking)

Contd....

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 233