Empowering Banks through Technology at Banknet's Summit

Technology has played a significant role in improving the efficiency of the banking and financial system in recent years. Information technology has also enabled sophisticated product development, better market infrastructure, implementation of reliable techniques for control of risks and increased geographical reach to distant and diversified markets.

The advent of new private banks with their superior state-of-the-art technology-based services pushed state owned banks in India to follow suit by going in for the latest technologies so as to meet the threat of competition and retain their customer base.

Issues trends and challenges in the banking technology will be discussed at Banknet’s Third International Bank Tech Summit on 10th October 2007 at Taj Lands End, Mumbai, India. According to Anurag Khanna, Founder and CMD of Banknet Group, the Bank Tech Summit themed “Empowering Banks though Technology”, will deliberate on how Technology can help improve the performance of Banks and Financial Institutions, when effectively aligned with business strategy.

There are increasing concerns globally regarding money laundering activities and banks in India too are formulating suitable policies and procedures. According to RBI, the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) measures to be formulated should include Customer Identification procedure ("Know Your Customer" norms), Recognition and disclosure of suspicious transactions. RBI has extended the deadline for implementing Basel II guidelines in banks to March 2008. Basel-II norms require banks to assess credit, market and operations risks and make higher provisioning for covering them.

Technology alone can and has been the aid in effective implementation of these checks and balances.

A few years ago, when internet banking was the next best thing around in the banking industry, banks were able to reduce the number of people queuing at teller counters and focus more on Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Customers benefited with the power and ease of transacting from the comfort of their homes. However, phishing, pharming etc. are making customers vulnerable to identity theft attacks. Banks are trying their best to plug in these last few loopholes thereby making transactions secure enough to win the trust of customers. Mobile banking and ATMs have now become favourites of the banking industry because of ease of use and increasing customer satisfaction.

IT vendors are seeing this as an opportunity to develop new systems for the latest trends in the industry and helping to secure transactions. Automating such processes by implementing technology is yet another challenge.

Prominent speakers from Reserve Bank of India and major banks in India like State Bank of India, Bank of India, Axis Bank (UTI Bank), Kotak Mahindra Bank, City Union Bank, ABN Amro Bank, IndusInd Bank, IDFC, Yes Bank and senior representatives from global IT majors like Infrasoft Technologies, Sify, IBM, R2K, HP, Verisign, Sun Microsystems, Canon, Sybase, Informatica, Cognizant, Paymate and Microsoft will come together at the Bank Tech summit to facilitate information sharing, interaction and exchange of views.

It is not just IT deployment that is an area of concern – the expectations from IT have been high too. Bankers expect technology to reduce the operating as well as transaction costs. Also the issue of rapid obsolescence needs to be addressed. This is a bigger challenge for any IT vendor, considering that they have to take care of the security for banks as well.

Bank Tech summit annually organised by the Banknet Group will provide an effective platform for knowledge exchange and will go a long way in bridging knowledge gaps, facilitating innovation and meeting exacting and rising client needs for both the IT sector and Banks, added Mr Khanna.

BANKNET GROUP, promoted and managed by senior bankers, is focused on Banking knowledge, research and conferences. Banknet brings out publications and reports specific to Banking, IT-BPO industry based on extensive industry research and surveys Banknet is also one of the largest organisers of banking industry conferences. Banknet India’s online banking and technology portal www.banknetindia.com is ranked among the top 25 banking sites and the top 20 banking technology sites in the world.

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