NABARD brings core banking solution to cooperatives

In one of the biggest initiatives towards institution-building, India’s National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has facilitated the process of bringing the cooperative sector into its core banking solution (CBS) platform. A total of 201 state and central cooperative banks with 6,953 branches from 16 states and 3 UTs of the country have joined the “NABARD initiated Project for CBS in Co-operatives”. All 201 banks with 6,953 branches under NABARD project are fully on CBS. This includes 122 new branches which were directly opened on CBS platform.

The model followed in the initiative is Application Service Provider (ASP) model using the concept of cloud computing. The roll-out process is in the final stage and branches are being migrated on CBS platform on a regular basis.

Bringing the cooperative banks under CBS would provide the following advantages: bring them at par with the technological platform of the commercial banks and also RRB and match up with these institutions in providing similar kind of services in the hinterlands of the country; transparency and regular reconciliation and balancing of books of account to arrest pilferage; once the banks are on a technology platform they will be in a position to utilize technological solution furthering the financial inclusion initiative in rural India; the customer of the banks can avail facilities like any branch banking, e-transfer of funds to anywhere of the country, etc.; enables GOI to transfer incentive/subsidy/other payments to the account holders based on Aadhaar number; technological solution is expected to release staff members so that there will be more follow-up with the customers and also help bring in new customers/clients to the banks, thus improving their business portfolio.