E-track Final

e-track
business of future
punjab national bank institute
of information technology
vol. IV no.2
quarterly journal
april-june-2008
e-track
e-track
From the editor
Dear Readers
Editor
Pratima Trivedi
Penalty due to non-payment of bill is not new to anyone of
us. And quite obviously, who likes the long procedure of
writing a cheque, standing in a long queue and then
ensuring that the particular amount is available in your bank
account? Indian banks are trying to make your life easier.
Not just bill payment, you can make investments, shop or
buy tickets and plan a holiday at your fingertips.Keeping this
in mind articles have been kept on E banking and mobile
banking, elaborating the various issues relating to them.
Editorial Team
Pramod Dikshit
M K Bose
Swapnil Srivastava
Sanjay Srivastava
Printed by
Swastik Printing Press
27, Mai Gi Ki Bagiya,
Kapoorthala Crossing,
Mahanagar, Lucknow
Mobile : 9415419300
Payment and settlement system plays a vital role in the
efficient functioning of the financial system. The Reserve
Bank, therefore, continued to strengthen the institutional
framework for payment and settlement systems by
increased use of technology in service delivery by
introduction of RTGS, NEFT, ECS, EFT , Cheque Truncation
etc. To make working in these more efficient and easy FAQs
have been added about payment and settlement system.
punjab national bank institute of
information technology
Vibhuti Khand, Gomti Nagar,
Lucknow--226 010 (U.P.)
T : +91 522 2721442, 2721174
F : +91 522 2721201, 2721441
E-mail : [email protected]
URL : www.pnbiit.com
The importance of Knowledge Management (KM) is
increasingly recognized in education since it deals with
information and knowledge resources. The challenge for
educational organizations is to develop effective strategies
for managing the knowledge resources and providing
appropriate access to this information. The article on
Knowledge Management in software engineering is further
going to enhance the information.
Hope this serving of e track, enriches your knowledge.
Thought for the quarter
“To a brave man, good and bad luck are
like his left and right hand. He uses both.”
- St Catherine of Siena
Happy Reading…………
Pratima Trivedi
e-mail : [email protected]
Reader's Comments
The contents of e track are informative and brought out in an interesting manner which would be a useful reference
Journal for banking fraternity. I am thoroughly impressed by selection of articles as well. I complement and appreciate the
efforts put in by the editorial team of PNBIIT in bringing out this informative journal. The Institute's efforts in this direction will
be of immense value to Indian banking Community in updating the changing Scenario particularly in the technology front.
H N Sinor , Chief Executive , Indian Banking Association
I have gone through Jan- March issue of e track and find articles to be very informative. The choice of subjects is very good and
the journal looks very appealing. Please place on record my appreciation to all those who contributed their mite to make the
issue so interesting.
Kaza Sudhakar, Chief General Manager , RBI
I've read the Jan '08 to Mar '08 issue of e-track but must admit that all the articles are quite gripping and well illustrated.
It has closely touched on the tremors felt by the financial industry worldwide as a result of subprime debacle and credit crunch.
All articles appeared to be very much inline with the current trend followed in the financial sector highlighting the global
practices and actual facts and figures. "
Shalini Tiwari, Associate, Morgan Stanley UK
Contents
From Executive Director's Desk
From Director's Desk
E-Banking : A Door Step for Global Finance
The New Revolution in M-Commerce : Mobile Banking
Frequently asked Questions in Payment and Settlement System
Knowledge Management in Software Engineering
Financial and Technical News
April-June-2008
2
K. Raghuraman
Ajay Misra
Prof. Sumeet Gupta
Anshum Srivastava
RBI-DPSS, Central Office
Pramod Dikshit
3
4
5
12
21
28
33
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From Executive Director's Desk
Recognizing and managing shifting business
Punjab National Bank's
paradigms, albeit with the help of the enormous leaps in
vision is to position itself as a
technology advancements, is the need of the hour.
world-class, cost effective and
Theories that snugly fit into one framework today
customer friendly Bank,
become obsolete the day after. Today, intense
integrating technology in
competition and increasing end-use assertiveness force
serving various segments of the
businesses to drastically cut down their response time.
society to facilitate inclusive
Perform or perish, that is the call of the day.
economic growth. PNB has never looked technology as
a tool, but it has used it as a business enabler-a key driver
In the five decades since independence, banking
in business development and Financial Inclusion.
in India has evolved through four distinct phases.
During the Fourth phase, also called as Reform Phase,
Along with various other steps taken, in an
Recommendations of the Narasimham Committee
endeavor to spread the IT culture, PNB has also set up
(1991) paved the way for major changes in the banking
Punjab National Bank Institute of Information
sector. Important initiatives with regard to the reforms
Technology (PNBIIT), an autonomous body dedicated
in the banking system were taken in this phase. Entry of
to the Nation with an object to impart contemporary
new generation private sector and multi national banks
training and education in the usage of IT in developing
brought new face of competition before the public
operations and business of Banking. PNBIIT has been
sector banks in India. These new generation banks with
fulfilling its objectives by running several training
the help of latest technologies have introduced world
programmes relating to Core Banking Solution, and
class banking products and whetted the customer
other IT areas not only for the staff of Punjab National
appetite and expectations. Spurred with the competition
Bank but also for other banks .
and rising customer expectations pushed Public Sector
I am happy to mention that PNBIIT has been
Banks also to follow suit.
regularly bringing out “e – track”, a quarterly journal in
Indian banking industry, today is in the midst of
order to spread and enhance the IT awareness among the
an IT revolution. A combination of regulatory and
banking fraternity. The Journal has collection of
competitive reasons has led to increasing importance of
informative articles which is sure to add to the
total banking automation in the Indian Banking
knowledge of its readers. The name of the journal i.e. 'e-
Industry. Technology up gradation has brought about
track: Business of Future' is quite apt since technology
significant changes in the business process and has
is going to be the defining criteria for the success of any
improved productivity by reducing transaction cost. It
organization in future.
has also facilitated the out reach of banking services in
I wish all success to PNBIIT and 'e-track' in its
the rural hinter land in a major way and has made it
future endeavor to educate people.
possible for the banks to undertake the project of
(K. Raghuraman)
Financial Inclusion.
Executive Director
Punjab National Bank
Member, Governing Body, PNBIIT, Lucknow
3
April-June-2008
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From Director's Desk
Rapid expansion of banking services and its
dependence on technology has created a demand for the
manpower with new skill sets. Banking industry in our
country can be broadly divided into three segments; Public
Sector Banks (PSBs), Private Sector Banks and Multinational
or Foreign Origin Banks. Manpower requirements in these
segments are different. Whereas Private Sector Banks and
MNC Banks are normally located in big towns and target high
volume, high net worth individuals and corporate business,
PSBs are spread through out the country and are providing
banking facilities to all segments of society without
discrimination. It can also be said that the former are into class
banking and the later into mass banking. Other major
difference in the working involves the process and the
technology deployed. PSBs have migrated from their manual
systems to disparate stand alone software solutions in late
nineties and thereafter to Core Banking Solution. The Private
Sector and MNC banks started with the latest technology
available from the very beginning. Due to this reason, PSBs
have to struggle to migrate from legacy systems to core
banking dealing with all the complex issues of migrating vast
legacy data into the new systems, flawlessly. The new
generation private sector and MNC banks did not have to face
these issues. The most vital aspect of migration from manual
to computerized and then to core banking environment was
however not the migration of data and business process
reengineering but to provide the new skill set to a vast
manpower, majority of whom were totally devoid of
familiarity with computers. Besides, this has also created a
demand for creating a new cadre of core IT officials to
efficiently manage the new infrastructure.
The boom in the IT sector in the last 10-15 years have
created huge demand for IT professionals in the industry
thereby raising the compensation package for them. The
private sector banks and industry have the freedom to hire
professionals with the required skill set at the market related
compensation packages but it is a major constrain for the
public sector banks which have to attract this sought after
manpower at the defined pay scales. This has put the PSBs in a
disadvantageous position vis-a-vis their competitors. There
are also factors of costs and time in recruiting and training this
manpower to meet the job requirement. This brings us to the
issue of quality of manpower available in the market. As per
the study of NASSCOM more than 75% of the IT graduates
coming out of the various engineering colleges and
institutions do not possess the required skills to be employed.
The best of the lot i.e. the top 25% or so is readily picked up by
private sector and the rest is left to be picked up by others.
PSBs have to spend anywhere from 6-12 months to train them
to the desired level of productivity. This manpower after
getting trained and experience on the job foe one to two year
become hot manpower resource to be picked up again by high
paying private sector jobs. Thus the PSBs have to
continuously face the problem of high attrition of qualified
and trained manpower and manage the time lag between
April-June-2008
attrition and replacement without compromising the services.
It has become a huge operational risk which is to be measured,
mitigated and provided for as per the BASEL II guidelines.
The solution lies into continuous supply of qualified
and trained manpower. Even the private sector banks with
much higher compensation package have not been fully able
to meet their manpower requirement and have adopted
innovative approach to meet the shortfall. Some of these
banks have collaborated with professional training
institutions and introduced courses which promise the
students assured jobs in these banks when they take admission
in these courses and successfully complete it. These
programmes are a big success and provide the sponsors with
qualified and trained manpower which can be deployed
productively deployed from day one. It is a win-win situation
for both. The prospective employee is assured of the job and
the employer gets trained manpower without incurring any
costs. Sensing this need, PNBIIT has introduced a six month
educational programme, Advanced Diploma in Banking
Technology (ADBT), in collaboration with IIBF. The
programme has been designed to give intensive inputs in all
the aspects of banking including operational process using
Finnacle-most widely used core banking software in banking
sector and advanced inputs in Data Base Management using
Oracle, Operating System Management using Unix/Linux,
Networking Technologies and Management, Internet
Banking Technology using JAVA J2EE. In addition to this the
students are exposed to the soft skills of business
communication, presentation etc. The course is aimed at first
class holders of engineering degree in Computer Science or
Information Technology so that they meet the base level
educational qualification for employment as IT
officers/Managers in the Banking sector. The students
acquires additional skills and training at his own cost and time
and can be put to productive use with minimum grooming.
The quality of intake is assured in the admission process in
which the students are required to take a written test, group
discussion and interview.
The success of such initiatives however depends upon
the industry support. There is a need among the pubic sector
banks to recognize the usefulness of such initiative and take
proactive steps to modify recruitment policies and procedures
if need be. The course like ADBT should be given recognition
as an, add on skill enhancement course for the students who
possess the basic qualification to be eligible for the
recruitment in the banking sector. The course brings value to
the recruiting organization in terms of savings of cost of
recruitment and training. If the human resources head and the
top management of the banks take a step in this direction it
will give a much needed encouragement to a non profit
making organization like us, sponsored by a public sector
bank.
Ajay Misra
Director-PNBIIT
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E-BANKING: A DOOR STEP FOR GLOBAL FINANCE
-Prof. Sumeet Gupta
Eighteenth and seventh centuries
industrial revolution has brought drastic
changes in the life style of individuals.
Earlier one had to wait in long queues to
have any transaction with the bank. The
emergence of e-commerce has
revolutionized the way we live and
conduct the day to day transactions. The electronic
networking of banks is being started in 1980 with the
concept of total bank automation (Rangrajan committee
report). Information and communication technology has
made the entire world a global village. In this arena of
growth e-banking is the major development.
information is read only and authentication of customer is
done through password.
Fully electronic transactional system- In this system
customer can directly submit the update of transactions
online. High degree of security and control is needed in
this system.
Common E-Banking Services-
E-banking is defined as automated delivery of
banking products and services directly to the customers
through electronic communication channels. Internet
banking or E-Banking refers to the facility provided by
various banks to their customers which enables their
customers to get connected to the bank's website with the
help of a computer and a browser. E-banking provides a
system through which customers, business organization
can access account, transact business and multiple
number of electronic fund transfer through a public or
private network can be done. Now e-banking has become
anywhere banking, global banking and door-step
banking. Banking system is the life giving blood to the
economy. The IT development in the banking has made
possible for the banks to offer multiple products and
services under single window concept. E-banking is the
web base service that help customers to access their
accounts anywhere. E-banking allows the customers to
log on to the banks' website using personal identification
number given by the bank. ATM (automatic teller
machine) makes it possible to withdraw money without
human teller using public key infrastructure (using
password).
Account management
Account management
Bill payment and
presentment
Cash management
New account opening
Consumer wire transfers
Small business loan applications,
approvals, or advances
Investment/Brokerage
services
Commercial wire transfers
Loan application and
approval
Business-to-business payments
Account aggregation
Employee benefits/pension
Source :
http://www.ffiec.gov/ffiecinfobase/booklets/e_banking/
ebanking_00_intro_def.html
The most commonly used e-banking services are:
1.
Phone Banking: Phone banking is also called as
The internet banking products in India are divided
into three type on the basis of levels of access granted.
These are:
Information system – This part includes the accessing of
the particular banks website by the customers of the
general purpose for gathering informants like interest
rates on loans, branch location of a bank, bank's
production and its features, loan and deposit calculations
etc.
Electronic information transfer system – This system
provides customer specific information like account
balance, transaction details and account statement. The
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April-June-2008
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Bank Branches are connected to the SWIFT (Society for
World Wide Inter Bank Financial Transactions)
Tele-Banking. Customers can dial the given
number and get information related to their bank
account and even the customer can request for stop
payment and cheque book etc.
4.
Online Trading: E-Banking has replaced the
traditional trading ring/pit. Now a day's cash
trading/ margin trading/spot trading/rolling
settlement is done online using DEMAT facilities
offered by bank.
5.
IPOs Online: This system is recently proposed for
the investment in IPOs. IPOs' online system is
proposed due to complaints by the investors that
they are not receiving money back on time. In this
system banks lock the money of the investor till the
allotment is not made and after the allotment is
being made to the customer, the money will be
transferred to the company equivalent to the
amount of the shares are issued and remaining
money will be unlocked in the customer's account.
6.
RTGS (real time gross settlement system):
RTGS was started in May, 1999. This system
allows secure inter-bank payments through-out
the country. It is the payment system in which
payment instructions are processed and settled
through-out the day using RTGS server. Banks
send messages in SFMS (structured financial
messaging solution) to RTGS server using
INFINET.
7.
Shared Payment Network Services
(SWADHAN): Indian bank association has
developed SWADHAN system in 1997, which
allows its member banks to share their ATMS with
other participating banks. SWADHAN provides
banking 24 hours a day, seven days in a week to the
customers.
8.
EDI (Electronic Data Interchange): It was first
introduced in North America by retail industry in
the late 1960s and it was implemented in the other
area like tourism, manufacturing and distribution
in mid 1980s. Basically EDI is a system which
interacts with customer on one side and service
provider on other side. It reduces cost and
improved efficiency in transactions.
9.
ATMs (Automatic teller machines): First ATM
was established by the Barclays Bank in the US. At
that time ATMs was used only to withdraw cash
and to provide limited bank services. Now a days
banks are offering wide range of services through
ATMs like Cash withdrawal, Balance Enquiry,
Cash and Cheque deposit and Railway booking
etc. ATMs are providing 'Any Where and Any time
Banking'.
Source: http:/cab.org.in/ict/pdf/bankwise_initiatives/
ICICI_Bank.pdf
2.
Mobile Banking: Mobile banking helps
customers to conduct non cash transactions. SMS
are being sent to customers for cheque payment,
debit/credit card payment and money deposit etc.
More specifically many public sector banks and
private sector banks are providing this facility.
3.
Internet Banking: Internet banking works as
electronic shopping mall. It facilitates B2B and
B2C transaction. Online banking helps the
customers to access their accounts online and
makes payments online. Even the account holder
can use this system for reservation, examination
fees payment etc. With the help of online banking
cross border transactions are also possible.
Source: http://cab.org.in/ict/pdf/bankwise_initiatives/
ICICI_Bank.pdf
April-June-2008
6
e-track
10.
11.
ECS (Electronic clearing services): In this
system banks and institutions can directly deposit
the amount into the bank accounts of the
shareholders/depositors/investors without issuing
paper instrument. Repetitive and Bulk
transactions like installment of loan, payment of
dividend and installments of SIPs (Systematic
investment plan) are the some examples of ECS.
(Personal Identification Number) for the secure
transactions. An individual can change the PIN
also according to his/her convenience.
Plastic Card Currency: Credit Cards, Debit
Cards, ATM Cards and Smart Cards are known as
Plastic Card Currency. Now a days trend of using
Plastic money is increasing and it is convenient
mode of payment. The payment is done in the
digital form backed up by the bank or an
intermediary.
a.
b.
c.
Credit Cards: It is like an Overdraft facility
provided by the bank. Specific amount is
sanctioned to the customer according to the limit
of the credit card (Silver, Gold and Platinum). This
card facilitates the customers to purchase goods
and take services from the seller/service provider
through the collaborating credit card companies
like VISA, Maestro and Master Card etc. The
principal of Credit Card is “Use First and Pay
Later”
d.
ATM cum Debit Cards: ATM cum Debit cards
has the features of both ATM cards and Debit
Cards. Most of the Debit Cards issued by the banks
are also ATM Cards.
12.
E-Payment: E-Payment is basically a transfer of
fund from one person to another person using
BANKNET infrastructure. User bank can access
bank net through leased lines and they can verify
the e-payment using comet (computerized
message transfer and file transfer) software.
13.
Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT): EFT provides
the transfer of funds from any account at any
branch of any member bank in any city to any other
account at any bank at any branch of any member
bank in any other city. Centralized fund
management system (CFMS) and centralized
funds enquiry system (CFMS) conducted by
clearing houses of the RBI using INFINET
facilitates EFT. RTGS is the extension of EFT.
14.
Online Brokerage: In recent scenario, banks are
performing the role of depository participants by
making tie-up with e-traders that facilitates the
customers to buy or sell shares on-line
15.
Railway pass: E-banking also facilitates the
making of railway passes for local trains online.
Indian Railways has tied up with ICICI bank. The
facility is limited to Mumbai, Thane, Nashik,
Surat and Pune.
16.
Recharging your prepaid phone: Recharging
prepaid mobile cards by logging in to Internet
banking is also available. By just selecting the
operator's name, entering the mobile number and
the amount for recharge, the phone is again back in
action within few minutes.
Customers Opinion regarding E Banking
Debit Cards: It is also like Credit Cards, anybody
can make payment in electronic form, but in this
customer uses its own money which is deposited in
his/her savings/current accounts. It follows the
opposite principal of Credit Cards “Pay First and
Use Later”. Debit Card also contains the symbol of
VISA, Master Card or Maestro etc.
Transaction through E Banking
No, 36%
Yes, 64%
ATM Cards: ATM cards are often used to
withdraw money, balance enquiry and payment of
bills etc. In this, banks provide the four digit PIN
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April-June-2008
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Transaction through E-Banking: The following graphs
shows that 64 per cent of the customers are doing
transaction through E-banking and only 36 per cent of
them are not Transacting. Although 70 % are aware about
E Banking but only 64 % are transacting through E
banking.
Graph: (iv)
From the graph it is evident that 58 per cent
customers are using credit card as E-banking while 42 %
customers are not using it. Compared to the awareness of
the respondents (i.e. 70 %) about E Banking, the usage of
the Credit Card as an E Banking is quite less.
Graph: (i)
Using SMS Banking
Which is more convenient: When the customers were
asked about their preference between Branch banking
and E banking, 64% respondents preferred E Banking as
a mode of Banking Transactions. The following figure is
Which is more convenient
No, 46%
Yes , 54%
Branch
Banking,
36%
E Banking,
64%
Using SMS Banking
Graph: (v)
revealing their preferences for the both.
The above graph shows that almost half of the
respondents i.e. 54 % are using SMS facility provided by
E Banking while 46 % customers are not interested in
SMS Banking due to various reasons.
Graph: (ii)
Is E-Banking Safe and Secure: As far as customers
perceptions regarding safety and security is concerned,
68 % customers responded that E Banking is absolutely
safe and secure while 32 % respondents were doubtful
regarding the safety and security of the Services related to
Awareness about PIN (Personal Identification
Number): PIN is an important and primary means to operate
E Banking but only 48 % respondents are aware about PIN.
This is one of the Major setback in the way of expansion of E
Banking and Banks should take care of this issue.
Is E Banking Safe and Secure
Awareness about Personal Identification
Number( PIN)
No, 32%
Yes , 68%
No, 52%
Yes, 48%
E Banking as shown below:
Graph: (iii)
Use Credit Card as E Banking Tool
Graph: (vi)
Challenges of E-banking:
1.
No, 42%
Yes, 58%
Use Credit Card as E-Banking Tool
April-June-2008
8
Security: Security is the major requirement of ebanking. Basically fire walls are installed to
protect the internal system. Fire wall is the
gateway to guard against unauthorized individuals
to access the bank network. Security involves
verifying the identity of the customer using user id
e-track
and passwords. It is being done to avoid tampering
and hacking of data.
2.
3.
Authentication: Authentication is major issue in
e-banking. Public key infrastructure (PKI) offers
the authentication. PKI provides electronic
identity to a person through the issuance of digital
certificates, digital signatures and public and
private cryptographic key. Banks use symmetric
technology (same keys use for encryption and
decryption i.e. private key) to secure messages and
asymmetric encryption cryptography (different
keys use for encryption and decryption i.e. public
key and private key) to authenticate the parties
Digital Signature: Digital signatures are used to
verify the identity of the person who sent the
transaction. Digital signatures are stored in the
form of binary and a hashing algorithm is created
which is being used to verify the identity.
4.
Digital Certificates: It is a certificate which is
used to testify the truth of a customer. It contains
information about the user and it is being used to
verify the same. Digital certificate makes the use
of public key cryptography. The private key is
stored on user's hardware such as smart cards or ikeys.
5.
Standardization: Standardization of bank's
operating systems, system software and
application software is must for providing hightech inter-banking services.
9.
Social Challenges: Public trust and confidence is
a major challenge for E-Banking. E-Banking
would not be successful unless customers are
satisfied with privacy and security aspects of ebanking. E-Banking can generate confidence by
assuring that it is a convenient and cheaper mode
of banking transactions.
10.
Privacy: This issue is increasing importance. This
is for the benefit of the Bank as well as for its
customers. Banks are required to maintain the
privacy of the transactions by drafting such a
network through Server that each of the
transactions undertaken by the customers would
be recorded and customer identification would be
properly checked before undertaking transaction.
“A FLOW LAYOUT FOR A SECURED ATM MACHINE”
PRIME SERVER
Bank Server 4
6.
Area
Heavy Investment Cost: Banks have to invest
huge money to provide E-Banking services.
Maintenance cost of E-Banking system is also
very high. To provide E-Banking services is still
difficult for regional banks and co-operative banks
because it requires huge investment and it affects
their balance-sheet.
ATM 1
Area
Area
Server 3
Area
Server 2
ATM 2
ATM 1
ATM 1
ATM 2
ATM 1
ATM 2
ATM 2
SUGGESTED NETWORK MODEL FOR PRIVACY
The suggested model for privacy is given below:
7.
Infrastructure: Banks basically require
communication infrastructure for E-Banking.
Communication infrastructure basically includes
computer network and internet facility
(broadband). Automation of banking services is
another required infrastructure for inter-banking
transactions. The major challenge is reliable and
cost effective infrastructure.
The model describes the layout that is to be
followed for making an ATM Machine more
secured and safe. It is working in order to provide
more privacy to the customers who are using an
ATM Machine .The network model is designed to
prevent the cases of fraud that are occurring more
frequently .
8.
Legislative and Regulatory issues: Regional,
National and international regulation are the
prerequisites for E-Banking. These regulations are
basically required for prevention of fraud,
preservation of records, evidence of proof, cheque
truncation and liability for loss in case of fraud etc.
The network model at the top of the structure
shows the Prime Server which governs the respective
bank servers of the city. The respective bank servers are
located in different areas, for e.g. Bank server is located
in Area 1. Bank Servers in different areas are linked with
different ATM Machines concerning to that area. For
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April-June-2008
e-track
example in Area 1, there are two ATM Machines etc.
At the ATM Machine counters, the following
components must be employed for its safety and security
purpose: 1.
Password Confirmation
2.
Thumb Impression
3.
Time-in & Time-out
4.
Closed Circuit TV Cameras (CCTVs)
Conclusion: E-Banking is getting momentum to larger
extent with a development of retail banking and rural
banking. Banks are following up the research results of
Boston Consulting Group regarding the information
super highway and retail banking. The successful
implementation of e-banking depends upon awareness of
customer about e-banking facility. RBI is required to setup a network of all banks through single network. In a
growing economy like India E-Banking can prove to be a
lubricating oil. Emphasizing the availability of
infrastructure would make it possible the viable use of EBanking. E Banking now extends to Rural Kiosks also.
Thus E-Banking would act as a door step for global
finance. So the Banks can work globally following the
given mission.
“GLOBAL BANKING…….TRUTH OF TODAY
AND TOMORROW”
REFERENCES:
1.
Banerjee, Amalesh and Singh, S.K. “Banking and
Financial Sector Reforms in India”, Deep and
Deep Publication Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi 2002.
2.
Dutt, Rudder and Sundharam, K.P.M,” Indian
Economy”. Sultan Chand and Co. Ltd. ., New
Delhi, 2000.
3.
Machiraju, H.R., “Modern Commercial Banking”,
Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd. , New Delhi,
2003.
4.
Singh, Balwinder, “Agriculture Credit Sources,
Problems And Emerging Issues”, Deep
Publication Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi 2000.
5.
Various reports on Trends and Progress Of
Banking, Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.
6.
Various Reports on Statistical Tables relating to
Bank in India, Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.
7.
Mater Circular on Classification of priority sector
lending, Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai.
8.
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September 27, 2006, Mumbai.
April-June-2008
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Credit Risk Modeling: The Federal Reserve Bank
of Philadelphia's Perspective" Anthony M.
Santomero, President, Federal Reserve Bank of
Philadelphia
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Dimensions and Emerging Issues (by Dr. Y.V.
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for Monetary and Banking Studies, Geneva on
May 9, 2006)
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Issues
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Research Enquiry”, Indian Institute of
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Ltd., New Delhi, 1996
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Perspective”, UBS Publisher's Distributors Ltd.
New Delhi, 2002
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March 18-24, 2006,
Rakesh Mohan, "Valedictory address", The Bank
Economist Conference, India, 2002.
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Finance - Progress and Prospects", The Bank
Economist Conference, India, 2002.
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Technology, Government of India. http://www.
mit.gov.in/eg/ home.asp , 2003
Nikhil Agarwal & A.M Sherry, "The Advent of
Internet Banking in India and Related Legal
Issues", 14th Annual Management Education
Convention of Association of Indian Management
Schools (AIMS), India, 23rd -25th August 2002
Unnithan Chandana, Paula Swatman, "eBanking
on Internet - A Preliminary Research Comparison
of Australian and Indian Experiences in Banking
Sector", RMIT working paper series, 2001
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banknetindia.com/. 2001
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June
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(2001).Electronic Commerce. Pearson Education
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E-banking (Online Banking) and Its role in
Today's Society by Verena Veneeva
Papers For You (2006) "C/B/93. Dissertation. Will
online business replace the traditional business in
the banking industry in UK?", Available from
http://www.coursework4you.co.uk/sprtfina35.ht
m [17/06/2006]
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Adoption of Online Banking", Available from
http://www.coursework4you.co.uk/sprtfina35.ht
m [18/06/2006]
www.rbi.org.in
www.sbi.co.in
www.icfaipress.org
www.banktechnews.com
The author is Faculty at IBS Jaipur
“Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I
cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of
doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the
capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.”
- Mahatma Gandhi
11
April-June-2008
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The New Revolution in M-commerce: Mobile Banking
-Anshum Srivastava
Abstract:
communication with the e-commerce.
There has been a tremendous growth in
wireless technology in the last decade. This
advancement has changed how people do business
in Mobile Commerce (M-Commerce) environment.
M-Commerce offers the possibility of an entire new
level of financial flexibility, taking advantage of
both social and technological developments. As
mobile networks are upgraded with WAP, GPRS and
UMTS to deliver next-generation multimedia
services, the banks are getting ready to unleash
services on mobile phones. Next-generation mobile
banking services will deliver significant
improvements with user-friendly icon driven
instructions, instant access, security and immediate
transaction processing all at a lower session cost.
Banks will attain higher levels of customer
satisfaction and increased loyalty by providing
anywhere, anytime banking. They will benefit
further from lower administrative costs, lesser
number of branches, reduced headcount,
streamlined call centers and lower handling charges
savings which, hopefully, will be passed onto
customers. Several M-Banking issues relating
security, bandwidth, and business are discussed in
this paper to meet the challenges of future banking
using mobile wireless technology.
M-Commerce and MBusiness are two different
concepts. M-Business is defined
as the exchange of goods, services,
information and knowledge with
the aid of mobile technology. It
encompasses a range of mobile
activities, from communicating
with the colleagues using emails, to receiving
product information via SMS alerts, to transmitting
customer orders with wireless PDA's. M-Business
includes not only consumer-facing applications but
also enterprise solutions that enable companies to
operate more efficiently, better serve customers, and
generate additional revenue. M-commerce on the
other hand, is simply defined as the mobile
execution of transaction. Buying movie ticket on a
wap phone is an example of M-commerce, while
retrieving information about the film from voice
portal is not.
1.
Now it is seem that the mobile e-commerce
services will be the next biggest growth area in the
telecommunications markets, representing the
fusion of two of the current consumer technologies:
mobile communication and e-commerce. Mobile
communication is now considered a relatively
mature technology with the move from second to
third generation systems and with its high consumer
acceptance. M-commerce is bringing to- gather
these technologies with a history of security
problems coupled with the convergence of voice and
data communications, interconnection with external
data networks and issues surrounding the
transactions themselves, the potential risks are
possible very large indeed.
Introduction:
Electronic commerce (E-commerce)
continues to impact the global business environment
profoundly, technologies and applications are
beginning to focus more on mobile computing and
wireless web. The Durlacher Mobile Commerce
report defines m-commerce as “any transaction with
monetary value that is conducted via a mobile
communications networks”. In very simple terms,
one can say:
Internet and mobile technologies are
increasingly being adopted and utilized in the
banking sector; this has reshaped the consumption
of financial services .The high diffusion rate of
mobile phones coupled with the stability of mobile
communication technologies have greatly
contributed to the enhancement of mobile banking.
Internet Banking helped give the customer anytime
M-commerce=E-commerce + wireless web
According to Aphrodite Tsalgatidace of the
University of Athens, Greece, a mobile e-commerce
transaction is any type of transaction of an economic
value that is conducted through a mobile terminal
that uses a wireless telecommunications network for
April-June-2008
12
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access to their banks. Customer could check out their
account details, get their bank statements, perform
transactions like transferring money to other
accounts and pay their bills sitting in the comfort of
their homes and offices.
to the adoption of wide spread M-Commerce. This is
because it is more difficult to get a certain critical
mass of subscribers to use a universal technology to
enable frictionless service providing. The future will
show which of the following protocols is going to
deliver the strongest commercial value at any point
in time and will be supported by the largest number
of attractive applications.
2. Technology and Security Standards in
mobile Banking:
In general all the mobile protocols are very
similar to each other, being client-server based,
enabling a continuously increasing amount of
services to be provided to the users. Although the
protocols are very similar to each other but still the
variety of protocols is introducing some challenges
The technology used must be secure and at the
same time convenient to deploy and cost effective.
The following technology basis provides a summary
of the available models. Banks must deploy only
secure channels that provide a non-repudiable
platform to transact.
Telecom
Standard
Data
Bearer
User
Interface
Method of
Invoking /
Initiating
Transactions
Security
Hardware /
Setup
Requirements
GSM
Plain Text
SMS
Structured
Text
SMS / J2ME
Weak
Encryption
GSM
USSD /
Application
SMS
SMS / J2ME
Secure
Channel
GSM
GPRS /
WAP
GUI (Graphic
User Interface)
/ Structured
Text
GUI
Works on any
phone.
Workarounds
like IVR call
backs for
sensitive
information are
possible
J2ME client
requires Java
enabled phone.
J2ME / Browser
Secure
Channel
CDMA
Application
SMS / GPRS
/ WAP
GUI
Brew / Browser
Secure
Channel
Some of the technologies used in mobile commerce
are:
2.1. GSM:
GSM (Global System for Mobile
Communication) operates in the 900 MHz and the
Java enabled
phone with
GPRS. Without
GPRS this can
work within the
Telecom
provider’s
walled garden.
Operator centric
usage
1800 MHz (1900 MHz in the US) frequency band
and is the prevailing mobile standard in Europe and
most of the Asia-Pacific region. GSM is being used
by more than 864 million people (end May 2003).
Now GSM accounts for approximately 72 percent of
the total digital wireless market today. Today's GSM
13
April-June-2008
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platform is a hugely successful wireless technology
and an unprecedented story of global achievement.
In less than ten years since the first GSM network
was commercially launched, it became the world's
leading and fastest growing mobile standard.
Spanning over 179 countries, today GSM
technology is in use by more than one in ten of the
world's population and growth continues to soar
with the number of subscribers worldwide expected
to surpass ten billion by the end of 2008.
2.2. GPRS:
GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) is a
packet switched wireless protocol that offers instant
access to data networks. It will permit burst
transmission speeds of up to 115 kbps (or
theoretically even 171 kbps) when it is completely
rolled out. The real advantage of GPRS is that it
provides a connection (i.e. instant IP connectivity)
between the mobile terminal and the network but the
actual capacity would be consumed only when data
is actually transmitted. Pilot GPRS networks are
already in place today in many European markets.
However, GPRS will require new terminals that
support the higher data rates, and these seem to be
the bottleneck to the early adaptation of the
technology.
2.3. 3G/UMTS:
"Universal Mobile Telecommunications
System", UMTS represents an evolution in terms of
services and data speeds from today's "second
generation" mobile networks . As a key member of
the "global family of third generation(3G)mobile
technologies identified by the ITU, UMTS is the
natural evolutionary choice for operators of GSM
networks, currently representing a customer base of
more than 850 million end users in 195 countries and
representing over 70% of today's digital wireless
market [source: GSM Association]. Using fresh
radio spectrum to support increased numbers of
customers in line with industry forecasts of demand
for data services over the next decade and beyond,
"UMTS" is synonymous with a choice of WCDMA
radio access technology that has already been
April-June-2008
selected by approaching 120 licensees worldwide.
UMTS is already a reality. Japan launched the
world's first commercial WCDMA network in 2001,
and WCDMA networks are now operating
commercially in Austria, Italy, Sweden and the
UK.Several other pilot and pre-commercial trials
are operational in the Isle of Man, Monaco and other
European territories. Some 200 operators
worldwide are also giving their customers a taste of
faster data services with so-called "2.5G" systems
based on GPRS technology - a natural evolutionary
stepping-stone towards UMTS.
2.4. WAP:
WAP is a patented protocol widely marketed
in the US and an "official" wireless standard in the
European Union.WAP was first published in April of
1998 by WAP Forum - an industry association of
wireless device manufacturers, service providers,
and software companies, founded in July of 1997 by
the leading industry houses. WAP's design
accommodates all the following wireless networks:
CDPD, CDMA, GSM, PDC, PHS, TDMA, FLEX,
Re-FLEX, iDEN, TETRA, DECT, DataTAC,
Mobitex, SMS, USSD, CSD, and IS-136. WAP
utilizes a set of WAP developed transmission
protocols to transfer content from Internet to users'
devices. These underlying protocols include
WCMP, WDP, WTLS, WTP, and WML.
2.5. J2ME:
J2ME technology is developed using JAVA in
the wireless communication field. Java's security
model is matured and provides sound and secure
Java-based wireless communication. On the other
hand, Java's performance ratings have not been all
satisfactory, especially on low-powered machines
with limited processing capacities, such as the
current generation of wireless devices. Speculations
are circling in technical community of the feasibility
of Java based wireless devices given the Java
performance metrics and hardware requirements for
efficient Java processing and low cost preference of
customers of wireless devices.
14
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sufficient for 128 SSL encryption of wireless stream
calculations in laboratory testing.
2.7. SMS:
Since 1992 Short Message Service (SMS) has
provided the ability to send and receive text
messages to and from mobile phones. Each message
can contain up to 160 (even more) alphanumeric
characters. After historically finding it tough going
in the GSM markets, during the year 1998 SMS
started suddenly to explode. In October 1999, there
were about 2 billion SMS messages sent per month
within the GSM world, doubling the number six
months earlier. About 90 are voice mail notifications
or simple person-to-person messaging. The rest is
mobile information services, such as news, stock
prices, sport, weather, horoscope, jokes etc.
Additionally, SMS e-mail notification, SMS chat
and downloading of ringing tones has been offered
recently in some markets. Although SMS is the
backbone of current Mobile Commerce it has certain
limitations. In a way using SMS is like conducting
E-commerce by typing in HTML code each time a
purchase is made. The user requires some
knowledge, as specific requests have to be typed in
to receive the service. Using text-based services is
made easier by the introduction of the WAP protocol
and devices.
2.8. SIM Based Applications:
The SIM Application Toolkit (SAT/S@T)
allows for the service provider or bank to house the
Consumer's mobile banking menu within the SIM
card. The SIM Application Toolkit (commonly
referred to as STK) is a standard of the GSM system
which enables the SIM to initiate actions which can
be used for various value added services. The SIM
Application Toolkit consists of a set of commands
programmed into the SIM card which define how
the SIM should interact directly with the outside
world and initiates commands independently of the
handset and the network. This enables the SIM to
build up an interactive exchange between a network
application and the end user, and access or control
2.6. I mode:
I-mode gained a wide acceptance in Japan and
is now expanding to Europe despite WAP adoption
as a European wireless communication standard. Imode uses compact HTML for delivery of content
and packet switching to sustain continuous
connection at a data transfer speed of 9.6 kbps.Imode content is developed and distributed in
compact HTML format, which is a reduced version
of HTML. The format supports a number of HTML
tags and several binary formats, such as GIFs. Imode terminals do not support JavaScript. The
content providers create I-mode sites in compact
HTML format, and then upload the content to a Web
server, just as they would with regular Web sites.
(Since compact HTML is a stripped version of
HTML, the content is also accessible via regular
Internet browsers.) The DoCoMo server listens for
all the requests for information transfer and channels
all I-mode message traffic. When a DoCoMo server
gateway receives a GET request from an I-mode
device user, the DoCoMo gateway performs highlevel authentication, authorization and access
control, and channels the request over dedicated
lines, SSL-encrypted Internet, or unencrypted
Internet to content providers apart from accepting
and transmitting wireless information packets. The
content providers' response travels in the opposite
direction through the dedicated lines/Internet to a
DoCoMo gateway where the requested content is
encoded via a proprietary DoCoMo scheme. Digital
radio packets are then sent to a requesting user's
device. In the transmission process, DoCoMo
gateway measures the number of data packets
transferred by a specific user in order to charge the
user accordingly. Digital radio packets sent between
handsets and radio towers (DoCoMo's gateways)
are encoded via a proprietary DoCoMo scheme. No
information on the scheme has been made publicly
available. Further more, no encryption exists on the
I-mode wireless transmission, leaving the wireless
transport untrusted. The new I-mode java-enabled
503-generation microbrowser's chip specification is
15
April-June-2008
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access to the network. The SIM also gives
commands to the handset, such as 'display menu' and
'ask for user input'. STK has been deployed by many
mobile operators around the world for many
applications, where a menu-based approach is
required, such as mobile banking and content
browsing. The challenge in SIM based applications
is getting the application onto a SIM card that
already exists in the market.
The service provider has the option of sending
the application Over The Air (OTA), which entails
the delivery of several encrypted SMS messages that
self-configure the application on the SIM, or,
provisioning a new SIM card with the application
already embedded within the SIM. The latter has an
economic impact on the network operator and the
existing consumer in that the consumer would have
to obtain a new SIM card in order to use the
application. Once the application is on the SIM,
instructions from the consumer can be entered,
encrypted, and transported by SMS to the service
provider or bank. There may be difficulty in
upgrading or making changes to the application on
the SIM as the consumer would have to re-provision
the application in a process similar to that described
above; or the network operator would have to reload the application over the air to each and every
SIM card each time they make a change to the
application.
A benefit of SIM Based Applications is the
ability of the network operator or bank to own a
piece of the real estate on the SIM Card. Since the
SIM card is provided by a specific MNO, this
ensures the prevention of churn for that MNO, and
ensures that the bank's specific application is on the
SIM and therefore provides similar benefits to the
bank.
2.9. SMS Banking Solutions:
SMS (Short Messaging Service) allows users
to send and receive text messages on a mobile phone
using the numbered keypad on the handset to input
characters. Each message can be up to 160
characters long and sent to and from users of
April-June-2008
different operator networks. All mobile phones
available today support SMS. Indeed, SMS has
become a global phenomenon, with billions of text
messages sent worldwide every week. It is estimated
that a worldwide total of 1 trillion text messages
were sent in 2005. In addition to the person-toperson SMS, a large variety of content-based texts
messaging services are available. The majority of
GSM operators offer users the ability to subscribe to
services that send news, sport and entertainment
content direct to a mobile phone in the form of an
SMS.14
SMS Banking requires a registered customer
to initiate a transaction by sending a structured SMS
(SSMS) message to the Mobile Banking Service.
This SSMS requires a tag word identifier to instruct
the SMS gateway to submit the message to the
correct SMS application. A tag word is the first word
in the SSMS. The balance of the SSMS would hold
the instruction from the customer to the Mobile
Banking application.14 www.gsmworld.com
In each of these examples the SSMS would be
sent to a SMS short code or address (a shorter
version of a phone number). The SSMS would pass
from the consumer's handset through the GSM
Network to the MNO SMSC (Short Message
Service Centre). A SMSC stores and forwards the
SSMS to the SMS Gateway allocated to the short
code used by the Mobile Banking Service Provider.
The Mobile Banking Service Provider would use the
consumer's mobile number, forwarded by the SMSC
with the SSMS, to identify the consumer and
respond to the consumer's request. The response
would follow the same return path and, in the
examples given above, would respond to the
consumer with an SMS confirmation message. E.g.
'Bank Balance 150.00' or 'Transfer from cheque to
savings of 100.00 successful'.
2.10. Unstructured Supplementary Service Data
(USSD):
In its simplest definition, USSD is a menu
driven form of SMS where a customer would
receive a text menu on their phone as opposed to a
16
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string of words. USSD is a data bearer channel in the
GSM network. Like SMS, it transports small
messages of up to 160 characters between the
mobile handset and the network. Unlike SMS,
which is 'store and forward', USSD is session based
and can provide an interactive dialog between the
user and a certain set of applications. In other words,
both sides of the dialogue happen during a session
whereas an SMS based interaction is broken into
each segment of communication between the client
and the service.
USSD1 only allows one way communication
to the network, USSD2 allows two ways
Communications between the user and the network.
With USSD1, the interaction between the user and
the service would be broken into each
communication segment, much like SMS. With
USSD2 it would be held in the same session and
allow for a flowing conversation between the user
and the service. This is similar to e-mail and instant
messaging, e-mail waits for the recipient to read and
respond while as instant messaging allows for
immediate dialogue. USSD is as standard a feature
as SMS and is available in an estimated 95% of
handsets today [16].
USSD requires no pre-configuration on the
consumers SIM or handset and is already built into
most GSM networks. MNOs do, however, need to
commercialize the product by establishing the
necessary bearer channel billing capability, and
promoting the use of USSD for value added services
in addition to internal network and customer care
use. E.g. from *100# which would deliver an SMS
balance of your prepaid airtime account to a more
intuitive full service menu as discussed below.[17] A
registered consumer would dial a number that
includes *s and #s. This number could be saved in
the consumer's phone book as the bank's name to
avoid confusion in dialing or having to remember
the USSD string.
3.
Mobile Banking Architecture: The
architecture is based on the specific requirement that
the facility is provided through GRPS, GSM,
CDMA, EDGE, 3G and CSD enabled mobile
phones. With Mobile banking, the following
services can be availed of:
1.
Viewing A/C statement.
2.
Viewing Cheque Status.
3.
Stopping Cheque Payment.
4.
Cheque Book Request.
5.
Fixed Deposit Enquiry.
6.
Bill Payment.
7.
Shopping/ purchasing items.
The services can be provided to customers
directly by the bank or through a 3rd party vendor;
and explanations for both are followed.
Architecture 1: When the bank provides the service
directly to the customer
The setup will have a web server, application
server and the database at the bank's premises. We
shall call this the mobile banking server for ease of
understanding.
The application will ensure what services are
to be provided to the customer. Based on the banking
services provided to the customer, the security of the
infrastructure has to be built in. The database can be
the same as the Core banking database, having
another table for mobile banking users.
17
April-June-2008
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The customer uses his/her mobile phones to
transact through the mobile network. The Mobile
banking server in turn talks to the Core banking
systems of the bank for user authentication,
processing transactions, authorization, etc.
Architecture 2: When banks outsource this facility
to 3rd party vendors
This is the more popular architecture as Banks
can quickly roll out their mobile banking solutions
by connecting to a 3rd party. This is also the
architecture with more security issues as
interconnection with a 3rd party is involved. In this
architecture, the mobile banking servers are located
at the 3rd party vendor's data centre. These servers
will talk to the Core Banking servers of the bank
through a secured channel (dedicated or shared link)
for authentication, authorization and transaction
processing.
4.
Mobile Banking Services:
Banks offering mobile access are mostly
supporting some or all of the following services:
4.1 Account Information:
l
Mini-statements and checking of account
history.
l
Alerts on account activity or passing of set
thresholds.
l
Monitoring of term deposits.
l
Access to loan statements.
l
Access to card statements.
l
Mutual funds / equity statements.
l
Insurance policy management.
l
4.2
Pension plan management.
Payments & Transfers:
l
Domestic and international fund transfers.
l
Micro-payment handling.
l
Mobile recharging.
l
Commercial payment processing.
l
4.3
Bill payment processing.
Investments:
l
Portfolio management services.
April-June-2008
l
Real-time stock quotes.
l
Personalized alerts and notifications on
security prices.
Support:
4.4
l
Status of requests for credit, including
mortgage approval, and insurance coverage.
l
Check (cheque) book and card requests.
l
Exchange of data messages and email,
including complaint submission and tracking.
Content Services:
4.5
l
General information such as weather updates,
news.
l
Loyalty-related offers.
Location-based services.
One way to classify these services depending
on the originator of a service session is the
'Push/Pull' nature. 'Push' is when the bank sends out
information based upon an agreed set of rules, for
example your banks sends out an alert when your
account balance goes below a threshold level. 'Pull'
is when the customer explicitly requests a service or
information from the bank, so a request for your last
five transactions statement is a Pull based offering.
The other way to categorize the mobile banking
services, gives us two kind of services – Transaction
based and Enquiry Based. So a request for your bank
statement is an enquiry based service and a request
for your fund's transfer to some other account is a
transaction-based service. Transaction based
services are also differentiated from enquiry based
services in the sense that they require additional
security across the channel from the mobile phone to
the banks data servers.
5.
Advantages of Mobile Banking:
The biggest advantage that mobile banking
offers to banks is that it drastically cuts down the
costs of providing service to the customers. For
example an average teller or phone transaction costs
about $2.36 each, whereas an electronic transaction
costs only about $0.10 each. Additionally, this new
channel gives the bank ability to cross-sell up-sell
their other complex banking products and services
such as vehicle loans, credit cards etc.
l
18
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A very effective way of improving customer
service could be to inform customers better. Credit
card fraud is one such area. A bank could, through
the use of mobile technology, inform owners each
time purchases above a certain value have been
made on their card. This way the owner is always
informed when their card is used, and how much
money was taken for each transaction.
Similarly, the bank could remind customers of
outstanding loan repayment dates, dates for the
payment of monthly installments or simply tell them
that a bill has been presented and is up for payment.
The customers can then check their balance on the
phone and authorize the required amounts for
payment.
The customers can also request for additional
information. They can automatically view deposits
and withdrawals as they occur and also preschedule payments to be made or cheques to be
issued. Similarly, one could also request for services
like stop cheque or issue of a cheque book over one's
mobile phone.
There are number of reasons that should
persuade banks in favor of mobile phones. They are
set to become a crucial part of the total banking
services experience for the customers. Also, they
have the potential to bring down costs for the bank
itself. Through mobile messaging and other such
interfaces, banks provide value added services to the
customer at marginal costs. Such messages also bear
the virtue of being targeted and personal making the
services offered more effective. They will also carry
better results on account of better customer
profiling.
Another benefit of mobile services is the
anywhere/anytime characteristics .A mobile is
almost always with the customer. As such it can be
used over a vast geographical area. The customer
does not have to visit the bank ATM or a branch to
avail of the bank's services. As such with mobile
services, a bank will need to hire even less
employees as people will no longer need to visit
bank branches apart from certain occasions.
With Indian telecom operators working on
offering services like money transaction over a
mobile, it may soon be possible for a bank to offer
phone based credit systems. This will make credit
cards redundant and also aid in checking credit card
fraud apart from offering enhanced customer
convenience. The use of mobile technologies is thus
a win-win proposition for both the banks and the
bank's customers.
6.
Conclusion:
Mobile banking is moving up on the adoption
curve, which is evident in the number of
implementations known in the world and the level of
interest and discussion around the technology and its
implementation. It is also evident in the number of
technology providers emerging in the mobile
banking space.
However, banks going mobile the first time
need to tread the path cautiously. The biggest
decision that banks need to make is the channel that
they will use to support their services on. There are
several choices when considering how to implement
mobile banking. These choices include whether or
not to develop the technology within the bank, use a
shared infrastructure, or purchase the enabling
technology from one of many vendors.
The choices also include various mobile
bearer channels, suited to differing market segments
and differing capabilities of consumers handsets.
Each of the bearer channels has unique requirements
in provisioning and securing applications,
transactions and consumer data.
The selected implementation option including
bearer channel, vendor and value proposition,
should be driven by consumer adoption of the
technology, technical capability of the handsets in
the target market, affordability of the bearer channel,
and the consumers ease of accessing the service.
References:
[1] Securing M-Commerce, http://e-serv.ebizq.
net/ mob/olden 1.html
[2] M - c o m m e r c e t i m e s , h t t p : / / w w w .
mcommercetimes.com
[3] Computer: Mobile commerce: A new frontier,
http://www.computer.org/ computer/articles/
October/Varshney/ Varshney.html
19
April-June-2008
e-track
[4]
Wireless News: Study: M-Commerce Faces
Slow-Growth\ Future, http://
www.wirelessnew sfactor.com/ perl/story /
13518.html
[5] GSM Association, http://www.gsmworld.com
[6] UMTS Forum : UMTS Forum Home,
http://www.umts-forum.org
[7] www.Infogile.com.
[8] A. Tsalgatidou, J. Veijalainen, E. Pitoura,
.Challenges in Mobile Electronic Commerce.,
Proceedings of IeC 2000. 3rd Int. Conf. On
Innovation through E-Commerce. Nov. 2000.
[9] P. Travis, .Behind The Numbers: IT Managers
Seek Basic Wireless Commerce., Information
Week. com, Jan 22 2001.
[10] E. Sutherland, .Gaining M-Trust., MCommerceTimes.com, Feb. 13 2001.
[11] J. Gantz, .Mobile commerce: A mirage? Or a
megatrend?,. Computerworld, Oct. 23 2000.
[12] J. Fallon, G. Singh, .Mobile Internet Security,.
Baltimore Technologies, Feb. 2001.
[13] Philips Business Information, .Mobile ECommerce: Customers Want Simplicity, Not
Miniature Web,. Anywhereyougo.com, Feb.
25 2001.
[14] M. Dunham, A. Helal, and S. Balakrishnan, "A
Mobile Transaction Model that Captures Both
the Data and Movement Behavior," the ACMBaltzer Journal on Mobile Networks and
Applications (MONET), Volume 2, Number
2, pp149-162, October 1997.
[15] D. Haskin, .WAP: A Soap Opera with
Enormous Stakes,. all Net Devices, May
2000.
[16] M. Johnson, .Watching Wireless,. Computer
World, Oct.2000
Author is Reader at Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute
of Management & Development Studies, Lucknow
Book Review
A Man is not a Financial Plan: Investing for Wealth & Independence
Author: Joan Baker
ISBN: 9781741752083
New Delhi, Viva Books Pvt Ltd, 2008, X=201pp, Rs 250.
This book by Joan Baker is intended for demystifying the jargon of how, where and why
to invest. It is very practical, user-friendly guide for investment planning written specifically for
women.
The book is divided into five parts namely:Getting the life you want
v
Creating wealth through investment
v
The principles of investing
v
Planning your investment strategy and
v
Taking Action
v
The title of the book suggests the idea that some women still think that finding a wealthy
man is a way to achieve financial success in their lives. The author has expressed, “there's no guarantee that life comes with a man.
Even if it does, there's no guarantee that money comes with that man. And even if you get a man who comes with money there's no
guarantee that either will stay”. Woman have to take lead for there financial freedom.
We all know that we need to save more of our money; in fact we needed to start saving yesterday. The hard part is making
saving part of your life, and finding a way to make your money work better for you. The author rightly says that, “The ability to
delay gratifications is the hallmark of the successful individual in all areas of life,” and to get financial freedom you have to cease
mindless spending. Largely this spending is about buying things that make you look good in the eyes of others.
This book outlines the important processes of how wealth is created, budgeting, managing risk, borrowing, how and why
to diversify, off shore investment and property investment. There are charts to help to explain concepts, and it touches on how to
change current behaviors and spending habits.
Gone are the days of relying on a man for your financial future - after all, it's far too important to leave to anyone
else. A Man Is Not a Financial Plan gives every woman the skills and inspiration they need to achieve the future they dream of.
The power is of course, in the application of the concepts into your life. The basic idea of the book is everyone should have
some sort of financial plan and how to create wealth through investment.
Reviewed by Sanjay Srivastava, Librarian.
April-June-2008
20
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Frequently asked Questions in Payment and Settlement System
transfer from one account to another under
RTGS?
Ans. Under normal circumstances the beneficiary
branches are expected to receive the funds in real
time as soon as funds are transferred by the remitting
bank. The beneficiary bank has to credit the
beneficiary's account within two hours of receiving
the funds transfer message.
Q.5. Would the remitting customer receive an
acknowledgment of money credited to the
beneficiary's account?
Ans The remitting bank receives a message from the
Reserve Bank that money has been credited to the
receiving bank. Based on this the remitting bank can
advise the remitting customer that money has been
delivered to the receiving bank.
Q.6. Would the remitting customer get back the
money if it is not credited to the beneficiary's
account? When?
Ans Yes. It is expected that the receiving bank will
credit the account of the beneficiary instantly. If the
money cannot be credited for any reason, the
receiving bank would have to return the money to
the remitting bank within 2 hours. Once the money is
received back by the remitting bank, the original
debit entry in the customer's account is reversed.
Q.7. Till what time RTGS service window is
available?
Ans The RTGS service window for customer's
transactions is available from 9.00 hours to 16.30
hours on week days and from 9.00 hours to 12.00
noon on Saturdays i.e. to accept the customer
transactions for settlement at the RBI during 9.00
hours to 16.30 hours on week days and between 9.00
hours and 12.00 noon on Saturday. However, the
timings between these hours would vary depending
on the customer timings the branches have. For
inter-bank transactions, the service window is
available from 9.00 hours to 18.00 hours on week
days and from 9.00 hours to 14.00 hours on
Saturdays.
Q.8. What about Processing Charges/Service
Charges for RTGS transactions?
Ans While RBI has waived its processing charges
FAQS on RTGS
Q.1. What is RTGS System?
Ans The acronym "RTGS" stands for Real Time
Gross Settlement. RTGS system is a funds transfer
mechanism where transfer of money takes place
from one bank to another on a "real time" and on
"gross" basis. This is the fastest possible money
transfer system through the banking channel.
Settlement in "real time" means payment transaction
is not subjected to any waiting period. The
transactions are settled as soon as they are
processed. "Gross settlement" means the transaction
is settled on one to one basis without bunching with
any other transaction. Considering that money
transfer takes place in the books of the Reserve Bank
of India, the payment is taken as final and
irrevocable.
Q.2. How RTGS is different from National
Electronics Funds Transfer System (NEFT)?
Ans NEFT is also an electronic fund transfer system
that operate on a deferred net settlement (DNS) basis
which settles transactions in batches. In DNS, the
settlement takes place at a particular point of time.
All transactions are held up till that time. For
example, NEFT settlement takes place 6 times a day
during the week days (9.30 am, 10.30 am, 12.00
noon. 1.00 pm, 3.00 pm and 4.00 pm) and 3 times
during Saturdays (9.30 am, 10.30 am and 12.00
noon). Any transaction initiated after a designated
settlement time would have to wait till the next
designated settlement time. Contrary to this, in
RTGS, transactions are processed continuously
throughout the RTGS business hours (9.00 am to
4.30 pm on week days and 9.00am to 12.00 noon on
Saturday).
Q.3. Is there any minimum / maximum amount
stipulation for RTGS transactions?
Ans The RTGS system is primarily for large value
transactions. The minimum amount to be remitted
through RTGS is Rs.1 lakh. There is no upper ceiling
for RTGS transactions. No minimum or maximum
stipulation has been fixed for EFT and NEFT
transactions.
Q.4. What is the time taken for effecting funds
21
April-June-2008
e-track
for all electronic payment products till March 31,
2009, levy of service charges by banks is left to the
discretion of the respective banks. The bank-wise
details of charges levied are available on the RBI
website – www.rbi.org.in.
Q.9. What is the essential information that the
remitting customer would have to furnish to a
bank for the remittance to be effected?
Ans The remitting customer has to furnish the
following information to a bank for effecting a
RTGS remittance:
1.
Amount to be remitted
2.
His account number which is to be debited
3.
Name of the beneficiary bank
4.
Name of the beneficiary customer
5.
Account number of the beneficiary customer
6.
Sender to receiver information, if any
7.
The IFSC code of the receiving branch
Q.10. How would one know the IFSC code of the
receiving branch?
Ans The beneficiary customer can obtain the IFSC
code from his branch. The IFSC code is also
available in the cheque leaf. This code number and
bank branch details can be communicated by the
beneficiary to the remitting customer.
Q.11. Do all bank branches in India provide
RTGS service?
Ans No, all the bank branches in India are not
RTGS enabled. As on April 30, 2008 more than
44,000 bank branches are RTGS enabled. The list of
such branches is available on RBI website
www.rbi.org.in/ Scripts/Bs_viewRTGS.aspx
Q.12. Is there any way that a remitting customer
can track the remittance transaction?
Ans It would depend on the arrangement between
the remitting customer and the remitting bank. Some
banks with internet banking facility provide this
service. Once the funds are credited to the account of
the beneficiary bank, the remitting customer gets a
confirmation from his bank either by an e-mail or by
a short message on the mobile.
Q.13. How can a remitting customer know
whether the bank branch of the beneficiary
accepts remittance through RTGS?
Ans. For a funds transfer to go through RTGS, both
April-June-2008
the sending bank branch and the receiving bank
branch would have to be RTGS enabled. The lists are
readily available at all RTGS enabled branches.
Besides, the information is available at RBI website
(http://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/RTGS/DOCs/Listof
RTGSBanks.xls). Considering that more than
44,000 branches at more than 5,000 cities / towns /
taluka places are covered under the RTGS system,
getting this information would not be difficult.
Q.14. How much volume and value of
transactions are routed through RTGS on a
typical day?
Ans: On a typical day, RTGS handles about 30,000
transactions a day for an approximate value of
Rs. 2,00,000 crore.
FAQs on NEFT
Q 1 . What is NEFT?
Ans: National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT)
system is a nation wide funds transfer system to
facilitate transfer of funds from any bank branch to
any other bank branch.
Q. 2. Are all bank branches in the system part of
the funds transfer network?
Ans: No. As on June 10, 2008, 44,731 branches of
85 banks are participating. Steps are being taken to
widen the coverage both in terms of banks and
branches.
Q.3. Whether the system is centre specific or has
any geographical restriction?
Ans: No, there is no restriction of centres or of any
geographical area within the country. The system
uses the concept of centralised accounting and the
bank's account at one centre (viz, Mumbai ) gets
operated for the funds transfer instructions that are
being sent or received. The individual branches
participating in NEFT could be located anywhere
across the country, as detailed in the list provided on
our website.
Q.4. What is the funds availability schedule for
the beneficiary?
Ans: The beneficiary gets the credit on the same Day
or the next Day depending on the time of settlement.
Q.5. How does the NEFT system operate?
Step-1: The remitter fills in the NEFT Application
22
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form giving the particulars of the beneficiary (bankbranch, beneficiary's name, account type and
account number) and authorises the branch to remit
the specified amount to the beneficiary by raising a
debit to the remitter's account. (This can also be done
by using net banking services offered by some of the
banks.). even banks would accept cash from walk-in
customers. However, the customers have to leave
their full contact details so that the branch could
revert back to him, in case the transactions does not
go through, for any reason.
Step-2: The remitting branch prepares a Structured
Financial message (SFMS message) and sends it to
its Service Centre for NEFT.
Step-3: The Service Centre forwards the same to the
RBI NEFT centre (National Clearing Cell, Mumbai)
to be included for the next available settlement.
Presently, NEFT is settled in six batches at 0930,
1030, 1200, 1300, 1500 and 1600 hours on
weekdays and 0930, 1030 and 1200 hours on
Saturdays
Step-4: The RBI at the NEFT centre sorts the
transactions bank-wise and prepares accounting
entries of net debit or credit for passing on to the
banks participating in the system. Thereafter, bankwise remittance messages are transmitted to banks.
Step-6: The receiving banks process the remittance
messages received from RBI and afford credit to the
beneficiaries' accounts.
Q.6. How is this NEFT System an improvement
over the existing RBI-EFT System?
Ans: The RBI-EFT system is limited to the 15 RBI
centres providing the facility, whereas there is no
such restriction in NEFT as it is based on centralised
concept. The detailed list of branches of various
banks participating in NEFT system is available on
our website. The system also uses the state-of-theart technology for the communication, security etc.
and thereby offers means of providing better
customer service.
Q.7. How is it different from RTGS and EFT ?
Ans: NEFT is an electronic payment system to
transfer funds from any part of country to any other
part of the country and works on deferred Net
settlement, unlike RTGS that works on gross
settlement. EFT is also a deferred net settlement
system but is restricted to the fifteen RBI centers.
Q.8. Any limit on the amount of individual
transaction?
Ans: There is no value limit for individual
transactions.
Q.9. What about Processing Charges/Service
Charges ?
Ans: While RBI has waived the processing charges
till March 31, 2009. Levy of service charges by
banks is left to the discretion of the respective banks.
The bank-wise details of charges levied are
available on the RBI *website.
Q.10. How I will know which are the branches
participating in the NEFT ?
Ans: RBI publishes the list of bank branches
participating in the NEFT on its website i.e.
www.rbi.org.in .
Q.11. What is IFS Code (IFSC)? How it is
different from MICR code ?
Ans: Indian Financial System Code (IFSC) is an
alpha numeric code designed to uniquely identify
the bank-branches in India. This is 11 digit code with
first 4 characters representing the banks code, the
next character reserved as control character
(Presently 0 appears in the fifth position) and
remaining 6 characters to identify the branch. The
MICR code has 9 digits to identify the bank-branch.
FAQs on ECS
Q.1. What is Electronic Clearing Service (ECS)?
Ans: It is a mode of electronic funds transfer from
one bank account to another bank account using the
services of a Clearing House. This is normally for
bulk transfers from one account to many accounts or
vice-versa. This can be used both for making
payments like distribution of dividend, interest,
salary, pension, etc. by institutions or for collection
of amounts for purposes such as payments to utility
companies like telephone, electricity, or charges
such as house tax, water tax, etc or for loan
installments of financial institutions/banks or
regular investments of persons.
23
April-June-2008
e-track
Q.2. What are the types of ECS? In what way
they are different from each other ?
Ans: There are two types of ECS called ECS
(Credit) and ECS (Debit).
ECS (Credit) is used for affording credit to a
large number of beneficiaries by raising a single
debit to an account, such as dividend, interest or
salary payment.
ECS (Debit) is used for raising debits to a
number of accounts of consumers/ account
holders for crediting a particular institution.
Working of ECS Credit System
Q.3. Who can initiate an ECS (Credit)
transaction ?
Ans: ECS payments can be initiated by any
institution (called ECS user) who have to make
bulk or repetitive payments to a number of
beneficiaries. They can initiate the transactions
after registering themselves with an approved
clearing house. ECS users have also to obtain the
consent as also the account particulars of the
beneficiary for participating the ECS clearings.
The ECS user's bank is called as the sponsor
bank under the scheme and the ECS beneficiary
account holder is called the destination account
holder. The destination account holder's bank or
the beneficiary's bank is called the destination
bank.
The beneficiaries of the regular or repetitive
payments can also request the paying institution to
make use of the ECS (Credit) mechanism for
effecting payment.
Q.4. How does the ECS Credit system work?
Ans: The ECS users intending to effect payments
have to submit the data in a specified format to one
of the approved clearing houses. The list of the
approved clearing houses or the list of centres
where the ECS facility has been provided is
available at www.rbi.org.in.
The clearing house would debit the account
of the ECS user through the account of the sponsor
bank on the appointed day and credit the accounts
of the recipient banks, for affording onward credit
to the accounts of the ultimate beneficiaries.
April-June-2008
Q.5. At which of the centres ECS facility is
available?
Ans: At present ECS facility is available at more than
60 centres and the full list is available at the web-site of
RBI.
The beneficiaries need to maintain an account
with one of the banks at these centres in order to avail
of the benefit of ECS.
Q.6. How does a beneficiary participate in ECS
(Credit ) scheme?
Ans: The beneficiary has to furnish a mandate giving
his consent to avail the ECS facility. He should also
communicate to the ECS user the details of his bank
branch and account particulars. Such authorisation
form is called a mandate.
Q.7. Will there be any need for the beneficiary to
alter this mandate?
Ans: Yes. In case the information/account particulars
undergo change, then he has to notify the ECS user to
carryout changes in order to ensure continued benefits
from the ECS user. In case the account particulars at
the destination branch do not match, the destination
branches would return the credit through their service
branch to the clearing house.
Q.8. Who will communicate the beneficiaries'
about the credit?
Ans: It is the responsibility of the ECS user to
communicate to the beneficiary the details of credit
that is being afforded to his account, indicating the
proposed date of credit, amount and the relative
particulars of the payment, so that the beneficiary can
match the same with the details furnished by the bank
in the account statement/passbook.
Q.9. What are the advantages to the ultimate
beneficiary?
Ans:
l
The end beneficiary need not make frequent
visits to his bank for depositing the physical
paper instruments.
l
He need not apprehend loss of instrument and
fraudulent encashment.
l
The delay in realisation of proceeds after receipt
of paper instrument.
24
e-track
be levied by sponsor banks. As regards Processing
Charges levied by RBI and other banks managing
the clearing houses, the same has been waived till
March 31, 2009.
Q.15. Is it necessary for the corporates/
institutions to collect mandate from the
investors?
Ans : Yes. A model mandate form has been
prescribed for the purpose. Payment processing by
banks becomes easier once the database is prepared.
SEBI has also issued guidelines to investors to
furnish their account numbers in their share
applications for printing the same on the
interest/dividend warrants, collecting the account
particulars and mandates may not pose much
problem.
ECS Debit System
Q.16. What is ECS (Debit) scheme?
Ans: It is a scheme under which an account holder
with a bank can authorise an ECS user to recover an
amount at a prescribed frequency by raising a debit
in his account. The ECS user has to collect an
authorisation which is called ECS mandate for
raising such debits. These mandates have to be
endorsed by the bank branch maintaining the
account.
Q.17. How does the scheme work?
Ans: Any ECS user desirous of participating in the
scheme has to register with an approved clearing
house. The list of approved clearing houses is
available at RBI web-site www.rbi.org.in. He should
also collect the mandate forms from the
participating destination account holders, with
bank's acknowledgment. A copy of the mandate
should be available with the drawee bank.
The ECS user has to submit the data in specified
form through the sponsor bank to the clearing house.
The clearing house would pass on the debit to the
destination account holder through the clearing
system and credit the sponsor bank's account for
onward crediting the ECS user. All the unprocessed
debits have to be returned to the sponsor bank within
the time frame specified. Banks will treat the
electronic instructions received through the clearing
system on par with the physical cheques.
Q.10. How does the scheme benefit the ECS userlike corporate bodies/ institutions?
Ans:
l
The ECS user saves on administrative
machinery for printing, dispatch and
reconciliation.
l
Avoids chances of loss of instruments in postal
transit.
l
Avoids chances of frauds due to fraudulent
access to the paper instruments and
encashment.
l
Ability to make payment and ensure that the
beneficiaries' account gets credited on a
designated date.
Q.11. What are the advantages to the banks?
Ans:
l
Banks handling ECS get freed of paper
handling.
l
Paper handling also creates lot of pressure on
banks as they have to encode the instruments,
present them in clearing, monitor their return
and follow up with the concerned bank and
customers.
l
In ECS banks simply get the payment
particulars relating to their customers. All they
need to do is to match the account particulars
like name, a/c number and credit the proceeds
l
Wherever the details do not match, they have
to return it back, as per the procedure
Q.12. How can the customer track-down these
payments?
Ans: Banks have been advised to ensure that the
pass-books/statements given to the customers
reflect the particulars of the transaction provided by
the ECS users. Customers can match these entries
with the advice received by them from the payment
institution.
Q.13. Is there any limit on the amount of
Individual transactions?
Ans: No value limit on the amount of individual
transactions has been prescribed under the scheme.
Q.14. What are the Processing / Service charges?
Is it a costly service ?
Ans: RBI has since deregulated Service Charges to
25
April-June-2008
e-track
customer and the ECS user to finalise these aspects.
The mandate can contain a maximum ceiling; it can
also specify the purpose as also a validity period.
Q.23. What is the current coverage of the
scheme?
Ans: At present the scheme is in operation at 15 RBI
centres (ie centres where RBI manages the Clearing
House operations) and at other centres where Public
Sector Banks manage the clearing operations. The
list of centres is available at the RBI web-site under
the procedural guidelines.
Q.24. Processing charges on individual
transactions
Ans: RBI has deregulated the service charges that
could be levied by sponsor banks. RBI has waived the
processing charges levied by RBI and other banks
managing the clearing houses till March 2008.
Q.25. Which are the institutions eligible to
participate in the ECS Debit scheme?
Ans: Utility service providers such as telephone
companies, electricity supplying companies,
electricity boards, credit card collections, collection
of loan installments by banks and financial
institutions, and investment schemes of Mutual
funds, etc.
Q.18. What are the advantages to the ultimate
beneficiary?
Ans :· Trouble free- Eliminates the need to go to the
collection centres/banks by the customers and no
need to stand in long 'Q's for payment
l
Peace of mind- Customers also need not track
down payments by last dates.
l
The debits would be monitored by the ECS
users.
Q.19. How does the scheme benefit the ECS userlike corporate bodies/ institutions?
Ans: The ECS user saves on administrative
machinery for collecting the cheques, monitoring
their realisation and reconciliation
l
Better cash management.
l
Avoids chances of frauds due to fraudulent
access to the paper instruments and
encashment.
l
Realise the payments on a single date instead
of fractured receipt of payments.
Q.20. What are the advantages to the banks?
Ans: Banks handling ECS get freed of paper
handling.
l
Paper handling also creates lot of pressure on
banks as they have to encode the instruments,
present them in clearing, monitor their return
and follow up with the concerned bank and
customers.
l
In ECS banks simply get the mandate
particulars relating to their customers. All they
need to do is to match the account particulars
like name, a/c number and debit the accounts.
l
Wherever the details do not match, they have
to return it back, as per the procedure.
Q.21. Can the mandate given once be withdrawn
or stopped?
Ans: Yes. The mandate given is on par with a
cheque issued by a customer. The only stipulation
under the scheme is that the customer has to give
prior notice to the ECS user, to ensure that they do
not include the debits.
Q.22. Can the customer stipulate any maximum
debit, purpose or validity period for the mandate?
Ans: Yes. It is left to the choice of the individual
April-June-2008
FAQs in Indo-Nepal Remittance facility
scheme
Q.1 What are the salient features of Indo Nepal
Remittance facility scheme?
Ans. It is a cross-border one-way remittance facility
scheme facilitating remittance from India to Nepal. A
remitter can transfer funds up to Indian rupees 50,000
from any of the NEFT branches to Nepal. The
beneficiary would receive funds in Nepalese rupees.
Q.2 Whether remitter needs to maintain an
account with a bank in India?
Ans. Not necessary. Even a walk-in customer can
deposit cash upto Rs.50,000 and remit it to the
beneficiary
Q.3. Whether the beneficiary needs to maintain a
bank account in Nepal?
Ans. It would be ideal if he maintains a bank
account, to which credit could be made. If the
beneficiary resides in hinterland not serviced by a
bank branch, in the scheme, Nepal SBI Ltd. Has tied
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up with a money transfer company in Nepal who
would make arrangements for delivery of cash to the
beneficiary.
Q.4 What minimum documents/ identifications
are needed to be presented by remitter?
Ans. If the remitting customer is maintaining an
account there is no further need for additional
identification. Otherwise, the remitter has to produce
proof of identification document like Passport /PAN /
Driving License/Telephone Bill/ certificate of
identification issued by employer with details and
photograph etc. This information will be captured in
the system in compliance with KYC norms. The
complete address and telephone/mobile number of the
beneficiary in Nepal will also be required.
Q.5 How does the transactions flow from India to
Nepal and what are the timelines for completion
of the transactions?
Ans. Remittances can be originated from any of the
NEFT enabled branches in India, which are around
44,000 in number as on date. The transactions would
flow to the designated branch of State Bank of India,
which would consolidate all such remittance
information received during the day. At the end of
the day the remittance information would get passed
on to Nepal SBI Bank Ltd, in a secured mode. Nepal
SBI would make arrangements for either credit to the
bank account or disburse the funds to the beneficiary
through their authorised money transfer agent.
If the beneficiary's account details are
available, Nepal SBI would make arrangements for
credit of the account. Other-wise the beneficiary has
to get in touch with the outlet of the Money Transfer
agency, after getting the UTR number from the
remitter. He has to produce details of the remitter
and a photo identity document, (generally
citizenship certificate) to prove his / her identity.
If the beneficiary does not approach the money
transfer agency even up to one week, the money
transfer agency would make arrangements for return
of the remittance to the originator.
Q.6 What are the charges for the remittance
arrangement?
Ans. As the scheme is targeted at the migrant
workers, concessionary charges are envisaged. For
transfer of fund from an account in an NEFT enabled
branch in India to an account maintained with Nepal
SBI, there would be no charges. All remittances
from any NEFT branch in India, it is free of charge.
However, under the arrangement, as Nepal SBI has
to make payment to the Money Transfer agent,
charges for other transfers would be as under:
(i) up to INR.5000/- will attract a flat charge of
INR. 50.00 inclusive of service tax for every
remittance
(ii) above INR.5000/- and up to INR 50,000.00
will attract a flat charge of INR. 75.00 for
every remittance inclusive of service tax
The entire amount of charges collected from
the remitter would be remitted to Nepal as a part of
the remittance and would form a part of the message
format.
Q.7 Is there any restriction on the number of
remittances?
Ans. Yes. Any remitter is allowed to remit maximum
of 12 remittances in a year under this Scheme.
Q.8 How does the remitting customer know the
branches of Nepal SBI and the outlets of the
Money Transfer agency?
Ans. The location and addresses of Nepal SBI as
also that of the Money Transfer agency are available
in the Procedural guidelines, that would be available
with the NEFT branches in India.
Q.9 How does the remitter get back the funds if
the same is not delivered to the beneficiary?
Ans. The amount of remittance will flow back to the
originating branch through NEFT and the bank would
communicate to the remitter about the return of the
remittance. He has to produce some evidence as a
proof of remittance like the counterfoil of the
remittance application form and receive it, if it was a
cash remittance. If it had been remitted by debit to an
account the credit will flow to the concerned account.
Q.10. Who should be contacted for redressal of
grievances?
Ans. Complaints and grievances will be handled by
the Banks concerned as per the extant norms of
grievance redressal procedure. In addition, RBI has
also set up a desk at NCC, Nariman Point, Mumbai
for grievance redressal.
Source : RBI-DPSS, Central Office Mumbai
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KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
-Pramod Dikshit
Software engineering is a knowledge
intensive business and as such it
could benefit from the ideas of
knowledge management. The
important question is, however,
where does knowledge reside in
software engineering? It is clear that
software engineering involves a multitude of
knowledge-intensive tasks: analyzing user
requirements for new software systems, identifying
and applying best software development practices,
collecting experience about project planning and
risk management, and many others. Three main
categories identified for software engineering tasks:
1.
Tasks performed by a team focusing on
developing a software product based on customer
requirements. This represents the core task of any
software organization. The team leader (project
manager) is responsible for ensuring that work is
completed on time and within budget and possesses
the intended functionality and quality. Software
Engineering is document-oriented and what is
produced during the project is a set of documents
such as contracts, project plans, requirements and
design specifications, source code, test plans and
related documents. These documents are not just
work products. There is also additional information
embedded within them:
(a) During the project they document the
decisions;
(b) After the project's completion, they contain
the history of the project. The documents can be
reused in different ways by the next project so that
people can learn from them, by analyzing the
solutions to different problems that these documents
capture.
2.
Tasks that focus on improving a team's ability
to develop a software product (that is improving
tasks in the first category). This category can
include tasks that might be conducted during and
shortly after the project. The reason for performing
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these tasks is to ensure that potential knowledge
gained in the project is not lost. Included here are all
forms of lessons learned and post-mortem analyses
that identify what went right or wrong in the project.
Also included are analyses of data from the project,
for example, comparisons of budgeted and actual
costs, estimated and actual effort planned and actual
calendar time. Tasks in this category attempt to
collect and create knowledge about one particular
project. The results from this activity are useful by
themselves, but can also be the basis for further
learning. They can be stored in repositories and
experience bases (for example, in lessons learned
repositories).
3.
Tasks that focus on improving an
organization's or an industry's ability to develop
software. This category represents activities that
analyze results from several previous projects in
order to identify similarities and differences
between them. The insights gathered by these
analyses can be formulated as knowledge or
experience packages and can be qualitative,
quantitative, or a mix of both. Examples of
qualitative packages are patterns, heuristics and best
practices based on a number of experiences from
different sources. Examples of quantitative
packages are estimation models based on the
measured attributes of previous projects and their
budgeted and actual outcome. Other examples are
knowledge that is packaged in terms of executable
software programs that automate steps of the
development process based on knowledge derived
from previous projects. Industry-wide standards and
recommendations also fall into this category.
Knowledge Management Support for Core
Software Engineering Activities
This section addresses core software
engineering processes and activities. These contain
the illustration of the wide spectrum of software
engineering processes that might occur in a typical
software engineering project. What is common
amongst the results from all these processes and
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activities is that they are all documents (even the
source code and the executable programs can be
regarded as documents). The work is, many times,
focused on authoring, reviewing, editing, and using
these documents. Due to the fact that many software
organizations are distributed over large geographic
areas, these documents need to be remotely
available. Because software engineering is so
dominated by the documents that are produced
during the various activities and processes, the
foundation for a knowledge management system is a
document management system. Hand in hand with
document management comes the need of
distributing information about the project, which
calls for general information management.
Information management can be performed using
regular office automation tools for e-mail, task
management, and, scheduling. An example of such a
system is Microsoft Outlook in combination with
Microsoft Exchange Server. General information
systems, however, all outside of the scope of this
article and are not discussed further.
Document management systems have been
used for quite some time, but as the term knowledge
management became popular, there was a tendency
to re-label the document management tools as
knowledge management tools, to accommodate the
new trend.
Portal technology enables web-based
communication within or outside organizations.
Although managing web sites can be fairly
complicated (for example, they need support for
links and content management) portals can certainly
be valuable to software engineering projects that
need to share knowledge captured in different forms.
Document Management and Dissemination
Here comes illustration of the characteristics
and functionality of document management tools by
discussing one of these tools, Hyperwave.
Hyperwave is a relatively popular system that
consists of a set of tools that implement both
document management and portal technology. The
Hyperwave Information Server enables
organizations to share documents within and outside
the organization. Access to documents is provided
through web browsers as well as through virtual
folders. Documents can be set under version control
so that multiple authors can edit documents quasisimultaneously. Hyperwave also has a mechanism
for defining workflows that could support various
processes (for example review processes). This is
particularly useful for larger software engineering
projects in which many people are involved in
authoring, reviewing, and editing documents.
Interesting features related to knowledge
management beyond regular document management
are Find documents and Find experts. The Find
documents feature allows a user to search for a wide
range of document types among the documents
residing on the server. Documents are automatically
indexed when they are uploaded to the server.
Indexing makes document searching possible by
using different parameters, as well as full text search
supported by a thesaurus. An extension of this
feature allows users to search for similar documents
as the one resulting from the search.
The Find experts feature allows users to search
for experts in certain areas. Authors of documents
that are related to the keywords used in the search are
identified as experts. The Hyperwave portal allows
users to create new content that is published on the
web site relatively quickly in form of tracks. A
relatively large set of predefined tracks is provided.
These tracks provide building blocks for the creation
of more complex personal portals.
Hyperwave can be used by software
organizations that need to share documents between
geographically distributed locations. The
mechanism for version control can be used to
manage multiple versions of documents such as
project plans, requirements specifications, design
specifications, test plans etc. Although Hyperwave
can handle source code as well, a better choice for
source code management would be software
development tools such as Concurrent Versions
System (CVS) provided by the Free Software
Foundation. More information can be found at the
general source for IT related topics.
Competence Management
As we are aware that not all the tacit
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knowledge in an organization can be made explicit.
Therefore, in order to fully utilize the competence of
the organization there is a need for keeping track of
who knows what. Generally, employees do have
knowledge about other employees' expertise if the
group is small enough (10-15 people), but larger
groups of people are exposed to the risk of “not
knowing what other people know.” An elaborated
solution to this problem is competence management,
a.k.a. skills management or expert network.
Competence management systems were
initially developed with the major objectives of
being able to find employees with the right skills in
order to staff new projects and to find individuals
who have specific pieces of knowledge.
Competence management has evolved over time
into systems for much broader use. Now,
organizations use competence management systems
as sources for marketing and sales and for
competence development, as well. The sales
department could use them to identify which kind of
project suits the company most. Marketing people
could use this type of system for external marketing,
for example as proof of a highly skilled workforce.
Organizations like Microsoft and HewlettPackard, which strive to have “only the best”
employees, use a competence management system
to keep their personnel at the highest competency
level. These organizations do not tolerate “legacy
people” whose skills have become obsolete.
Microsoft has employed a competence management
system called Skills Planning "und" Development
(SPUD) in their organization. With this system, they
want to develop a structure of competency types and
levels, by rating the performance of employees in
particular jobs and linking the competency model to
training offerings. Competence management has
also improved employees' own perception of
competence, helping them to better understand what
skills are required to remain in the company.
Hewlett-Packard (HP) has implemented a similar
system named Connex . HP's system relies on the
experts entering their knowledge profiles and
maintaining the profiles over time. To encourage
people to use this system, they have an incentive
April-June-2008
plan of rewarding people with frequent flier miles
and Dove bars. Positive experiences from using
competence management systems have also been
reported by . Examples of tools for competence
management are Skillscape and Skillview. Other
approaches to identifying experts in the
organization…
A common problem that knowledge
management is trying to address is the identification
of de-facto experts. A solution for identifying
experts would be to assume that one's expertise in a
certain area is reflected by the documents they
author. Thus, analyzing an organization's documents
can identify de-facto experts. Competence
management systems let experts identify themselves
by editing their own profiles. An example of profiler
tools is Knowledge Mail that uses an automatically
generated profile to identify experts. Knowledge
Mail is based on the assumption that the content of
people's e-mails reflects what they have knowledge
about. Knowledge Mail analyzes e-mail repositories
and builds keyword-based profiles that characterize
each employee. There are two kinds of profiles for
each employee: public and private. The public
profile keeps a list of expertise-related keywords
that the individual user has chosen to make public.
The private profile keeps the keywords the
individual does not want to make public. If the
search for expertise using the public profiles does
not result in satisfactory results, then requests can be
sent out to anonymous experts based on their private
profile. Revealing their own identity remains the
experts' choice.
Knowledge Mail can be applied to software
organizations and can help identify experts in
various technical areas, for example, programming
languages, database technologies, operating
systems etc.
Lightweight Approaches to Knowledge
Management
Lightweight approaches to knowledge
management try to better manage knowledge and at
the same time strive to not change how employees
currently work and to become part of daily activities.
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These approaches are relatively easy to implement
and have a great chance to pay off relatively soon.
Answer Garden is an example of a lightweight
approach that tries to capitalize on the knowledge
exchanged between Help Desks and customers
seeking help. All previous questions are stored in a
knowledge base that the customer can browse to find
answers. If the answer cannot be found in the
knowledge base, then the customer can post a new
question. The knowledge base is thus useful, even
when it does not contain all answers for a specific
area. The result is often that a knowledge base is
populated relatively quickly, especially where there
is a demand for knowledge. There are several
examples of Answer Garden concept implementations
on the market. Ask It is an example of a web-based
application that is hosted by Ask It systems and
allows an organization to quickly set up their own
knowledge base. An important component of the
Ask It system is the network of experts that will
answer new questions. Another example of the
application of Answer Garden is the Knowledge
Dust Collector, a system that supports peer-to-peer
knowledge management where everybody is
considered an expert in one or more areas. It blends
the ideas of organic growth and expert supported
knowledge bases with the concepts of the
Experience Factory. The Knowledge Dust Creator
captures the daily knowledge that employees
exchange and use every day without explicitly
acknowledging it. The knowledge dust is made
available to other employees and, thus, is useful
right away. Several feedback loops are provided so
that the knowledge dust evolves over time into wellpackaged experience in the form of knowledge
pearls. This activity does, however belong to higher
knowledge management levels.
Success Factors in the Implementation of a KM
System
Below is the set of factors required to exist for
a successful implementation of a KM system
Knowledge friendly culture – The organization
values learning and innovation, and establishes
appropriate incentives and reward systems. People
collaborate and have a positive attitude towards
knowledge. When there is free flow of knowledge
from other employees, individuals tend to respond in
the same manner.
Opportunities – Employees must be placed in an
environment where they have opportunities to use
their capabilities to the fullest.
Motivation – Employees must be motivated to share
their knowledge with other people in the
organization. They must be convinced that their
sharing of knowledge will be valuable to the
organization and, most importantly, to themselves.
Concrete shared objectives – Develop a broadly
shared understanding of the enterprise's mission,
current direction, and the role of the individual in
support of the enterprise and of the individual's own
interests.
Knowledge base – The knowledge base should be
managed the same way as physical assets. Time and
effort should be invested in designing, building and
maintaining its content.
Technical infrastructure – All knowledge
management systems should be linked to other
information systems, providing necessary security
features.
Effective governance for the KM practices –
Continuous monitoring, evaluation, and guidance of
the KM activities and their plans, results and
opportunities.
Interdisciplinary problem solving working
groups – Create problem-solving groups
comprising of people from a variety of disciplines.
This will transfer the knowledge from one discipline
to another, as well as provide solutions to
interdisciplinary problems in decreased time.
Multiple channels for knowledge transfer - A
variety of channels for knowledge transfer are
desirable, as each adds value in a different way. It is
particularly important to provide opportunities for
face-to-face contact, as well as electronic forms of
communication.
Measurement - Measuring the usage of the KM
system and its efficiency is essential to the accurate
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assessment and improvement of knowledge
management programs in order to be able to increase
the value or prolong the duration of the sustainable
competitive advantage.
Empowerment – Employees must be given
permission to innovate, improvise and stretch
enterprise policies and practices beyond the
predetermined scopes.
Conclusion
The focus of this article is knowledge
management in software engineering. It presents the
developments in knowledge management in
general, and for software engineering in particular,
and discusses models, approaches, and tools for
knowledge management. This article also presents
resources that can provide help, inspiration, and
information to organizations that want to better
manage their knowledge. Software development is
a knowledge- and people-intensive activity. Groups
that are geographically distributed carry out a
significant amount of the work in software
engineering. People in such groups must
collaborate, communicate, and coordinate their
work, which makes knowledge management a
necessity. As a matter of fact, small and stable
organizations where employees are within an arm's
reach of each other can probably survive without
k n o w l e d g e m a n a g e m e n t . H o w e v e r, f o r
organizations that are large and distributed, whose
environment is continuously changing, or have a
high turnover, managing their knowledge assets is
critical for survival.
A characteristic of software engineering that
turns out to be an advantage over other industries in
terms of managing intellectual capital is that
artifacts are already captured in electronic form and
can easily be stored and shared. In addition, software
engineers often have a friendly attitude towards
using new technology. This means that a software
organization that implements a knowledge
management system could have a good chance to
succeed with this mission. However, this remains a
challenging task because a knowledge management
April-June-2008
system is more than just technology. The truth is that
technology is only half of the battle. If people do not
want to share knowledge, then no technology can
make them do so. Thus, it is very important to get
acceptance from the people who should eventually
use the system. Acceptance is probably easiest to get
by demonstrating that the new system will make
employees' lives easier. Successful knowledge
management also requires management support.
This means, for example, that management must
invest sufficient resources. It is possible to achieve
short-term benefits from knowledge management
initiatives, but, in the end, knowledge management
is a long-term investment and must be treated as
such. Otherwise, it might fail fairly soon.
References
1) Agresti, W., "Knowledge Management,"
Advances in Computers.
2) Knowledge Management: Organizational and
Technological Dimensions edited by Joseph
Davis, Eswaran Subrahmanian.
3) Knowledge Management Tools by Rudy
Ruggles.
4) Software Engineering: A Practitioner's
Approach by Roger S Pressman.
5) Software Engineering Processes: Principles
and Applications by Dr Yingxu Wang, Dr
Graham King
1) http://www.kmresource.com/
2) http://www.systems-thinking.org
3) http://fc-md.umd.edu/
4) http://www.cebase.org/
5) http://www.sei.cmu.edu/
6) http://www.informit.com
7) http://www.knowledgemail.com
8) http://www.askit.com
9) www.expertexchange.com
Author is Dy Director at Punjab National Bank,
Institute of Information Technology, Lucknow
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FINANCIAL AND TECHNICAL NEWS
outreach and better CRM. Biometric and voiceenabled mobile handsets used over the next three
years. Mobile handsets will be used to offer all kinds
of financial services, including financial inclusion
initiatives in the days to come.
(Source : www.tech2.com)
PNB to set up branches in four overseas locations
Punjab National Bank, country's second
largest public sector lender is in the process of
starting overseas operations in four locations in the
immediate future at Norway, Dubai, Shanghai and
Singapore for having bank's presence in the
immediate future.
(Source: Financial Express)
Replacement of silicon chip possible
Washington : A new generation of transistors
will soon replace one of the world's most ubiquitous
technologies - the silicon chip.And these transistors
will not only slash energy consumption but also
operate under extreme conditions. The transistor,
designed by doctoral student Weixiao Huang, uses a
compound material known as gallium nitride (GaN).
It would help electronics systems to operate in
extremely hot, harsh, and high-power environments
- even those that produce radiation. These new GaN
transistors are so resilient that they could open up the
field of electronic engineering in ways that were not
previously possible due to the limitations imposed
by less tolerant silicon transistors.
( Source : www.siliconindia.com)
Emotionally intelligent computers
Sydney: An Australian-Indian is part of a
consortium of scientists who are developing and
licensing information and communication
technologies (ICTs) that can interact with humans in
an emotionally intelligent manner.
Some of the top minds working in corporate
and university research laboratories in Australia,
India, Japan and Singapore have developed
emotionally intelligent computers - which their new
company, Human Mind Innovations (HMI) Pvt Ltd,
will license and put to commercial use.
(Source : www.siliconindia.com)
BFSI: Largest Spending Vertical For It
Industry
The banking, financial and insurance sector is
expected to invest more than $2.5 billion by
December end, in hardware and packaged software,
retaining its position as the largest spending vertical
for the IT industry. This represents a growth rate of
18.5 percent over last year's $2.1 billion, according
to Skoch Consultancy Services, an analyst firm.
At 5th annual BFSI Summit currently on in
Mumbai, Skoch Consultancy Services polled 30 top
banking and insurance CEOs to determine the major
issues before the industry. The topmost concern of
the CEOs polled was outreach for different types of
micro-credit activities and servicing the needs of the
rural Indian. This, according to 86 per cent of the
respondents, was also the biggest stumbling block
for scaling up financial inclusion.
About 74 percent cited the need to target
higher revenues. Better customer relationship
management (CRM), more fee-based income and
cross-selling of financial products would lead to
higher revenue. 42 per cent CEOs said that an
integrated last-mile delivery channel for all financial
products was very important. Insurance CEOs felt
that an integrated insurance product, combining life
and non-life, was essential for the rural areas. This
will provide boost to financial inclusion efforts.
Applications like CRM, HRM, Business
Intelligence and Data Mining is that they are now
considered critical for cross selling, avoiding
customer churn and differentiating brand and
product offerings and knowing your customer better.
IT upgradation would focus on areas like
CRM, Human Resources Management (HRM),
Business Intelligence and Data Mining kind of
applications and services.
Banks and financial institutions try to reach
rural areas and adopt various financial inclusion
measures. If the last-mile delivery gets IT enabled,
interventions can be better and faster implemented.
It can also facilitate determination of eligibility of
fresh loans.
IT enablement would be critical to wider
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April-June-2008
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agreement with the American India Foundation, a
not-for-profit organisation, to make credit facility
available to NGOs working in the sphere of
livelihood promotion and generation.
The MoU aims to bring rickshaw pullers in the
banking fold and take care of their financial needs
for improvement of the standard of lives of their
families. PNB is trying to make this community a
productive asset of the economy and connect them
with the banking stream to enable them to benefit
from the economic development of the country as
well.
Loans would be for two kinds of projects,
Rickshaw Sangh under which borrowing NGOs
would in turn give loans to rickshaw pullers to own
rickshaws, and the Rickshaw Enterprise Project
under which drivers would be given rickshaws on
rent by the borrowing NGO.
(Source : Business Standard)
Dedicated Satellite to be launched
India is launching a dedicated satellite for
youth next year carrying scientific instruments
developed by students from Indian and foreign
universities.
"The mini-spacecraft will be launched in 2009
as a piggyback on board a polar satellite launch
vehicle (PSLV), carrying a remote sensing satellite,
from the Satish Dhawan space centre at Sriharikota
(about 90 km from Chennai)," Indian Space
Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman G.
Madhavan Nair told IANS.
The various instruments, developed by
graduate and postgraduate students of universities
from India, Russia and other countries, will study
and share data on earth imaging, atmospheric
applications, solar emission and galactic
observations.
The less than 100-kg spacecraft is being built
at satellite development centre in Bangalore. The
dedicated youth satellite is the brain-child of former
president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who proposed such a
mission during his visit to Russia two years ago.
(Source : www.siliconindia.com)
Robot that can walk like a human
London: Researchers trying to make robots
walk have so far met with limited success, but one
developed by a university in Netherlands walks as
naturally as humans do.
The robot, called Flame, is arguably the most
advanced walking machine in the world, at least in
the category that applies the human method of
walking as a starting principle.
Since the robot, built at the Delft Technology
University, mimics how people walk, it is likely to
provide insights into problems associated with
walking - and lead to better diagnoses, training and
rehabilitation equipment.
(Source : www.siliconindia.com)
Sunglasses that can take images
New York: Sunglasses with an integrated
digital camera in it are designed.
A tiny lens has been built into the frame of the
$100 sunglasses and uses 1.3 mega pixels to take still
images. One has to just press a button to take a photo or
use the remote control which can be kept in one's
pocket. If one's surroundings are dull and
uninteresting, he can listen to music instead as a tiny
MP3 player has been installed on the other side of the
sunglasses and comes complete with built-in earbuds.
They can be hooked out of the way when not in use.
(Source : www.siliconindia.com)
Robot that can Cook
Chennai: Here is a chef that can prepare lipsmacking sambar, rasam and vatta kozhambu and
may give the best cooks in Tamil Nadu a run for their
money. But the secret of Chef-bot's culinary skills
lies not in a kitchen but in a laboratory.
Four students of the Saveetha Engineering
College in Sriperumbudur, Chennai's industrial
suburb, have designed a robot, Chef-bot, as part of
their college project. As of now, Chef-bot's skills are
limited to Tamil preparations.
(Source : www.siliconindia.com)
PNB signs MoU with AIF for promoting micro
finance
Punjab National Bank entered into an
April-June-2008
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SOME THING TO THINK ABOUT
The train had started moving. It was packed with people of all ages, mostly with the
working men and women and young college boys and girls. Near the window was seated an
old man with his 30 year old son. As the train moved by, the son was overwhelmed with joy as
he was thrilled with the scenery outside... 'See dad, the scenery of green trees moving away is
very beautiful'
This behavior from a thirty year old son made the other people feel strange about him.
Every one started murmuring something or other about this man.' This guy seems to be a
immature....', newly married Anil whispered to his wife.
Suddenly it started raining... Rain drops fell on the travelers through the opened window.
The Thirty year old son was, filled with joy and said' see dad, how beautiful the rain is ...'
Anil's wife got irritated with the rain drops spoiling her new suit.
Anil said, can't you see its raining, you old man, if your son is not feeling well get him
soon to a mental asylum. and don't disturb public henceforth' The old man hesitated first and
then in a low tone replied ' we are on the way back from hospital, my son got discharged today
morning , he was a blind by birth, last week only he got his vision, these rain and nature are
new to his eyes.. Please forgive us for the inconvenience caused...'
The things we see may be right from our perspective until we know the truth. But when
we know the truth our reaction to that will hurt even us. So try to understand the problem
better before taking any harsh action.
Appeal: As a part of our drive to make the contents of Journal more pertinent and
germane to the readers we welcome articles on latest topics of Banking /
Information Technology. Articles may be of about 1000 words. Published articles
are suitably remunerated
35
April-June-2008
e-track
Advanced Diploma in Banking Technology
“ A stepping stone towards modern banking”
The year 2007 was a memorable year for Punjab
National Bank Institute of Information Technology as
we commenced with the programme Advanced
Diploma in Banking Technology (ADBT) in the month
of May.
The ADBT is aimed at creating a pool of
responsible techno-bankers for Banking and IT sector.
It is designed to impart in-depth knowledge and
expertise to the students through innovative learning,
supported by relevant high-end technology. The
pivotal objective of the course is to bridge the gap
between the industry and academia by producing next
generation quality Techno-Bankers and IT
professionals for Banking and IT sectors. ADBT is
aimed at creating professionals who should be
employable from day one.
The First batch of the programme was launched
on 14th May, 2007 in collaboration with IIBF,
Mumbai. The duration of the course was 6 months
inclusive of one month internship at PNB, which was
finished on 14th November, 2007 and all the students
have successfully completed the course and were
awarded ADBT certificate jointly with IIBF.
The course curriculum included banking
concepts, Core Banking Solution, advanced practical
concepts in database, Operating system, Networking
and J2EE.
The campus placement was conducted in which
two nationalized Bank viz Punjab National Bank and
Dena Bank and two IT companies viz Nurture Soft
tech, Bangalore and Alchemist, HP participated. We
are proud to inform that 25 students were successfully
placed in these organizations through campus
placement.
This is what the IT Companies and students have
to say about the programme:
“Let us appreciate the efforts put in by PNBADBT towards training these resources. We recruited 10
candidates from the first batch and we are happy with
their performance. These candidates are very good in
communication, confidence & technical skills.”
…….Mayur Shukla . HP India
“The knowledge which I got from you all, not
only in banking but also in UNIX & Oracle is proving
handy for me. I have been selected as UNIX Admin L2
by multinational IT Company in Malaysia. Thanks for
nurturing me in banking and IT skills”
………. Rohan Mehrotra, student
(Earlier Placed in Alchemist /HP)
“ADBT course forms a solid foundation related
to banking and IT concepts, its architecture and
contents are excellent”
…………. Pooja Pant, student
(Placed in Nurture software ltd)
“The course contents are very well designed and
I have learnt preliminary procedures of Banking. The
fundamentals of integration of IT & banking have been
explained very well. Here I have had the opportunity of
practically working on Linux as a root user, which is
never allowed anywhere in colleges or any other
institution. This hand on practice has given me an
absolutely new insight into all the theory I had read as
yet. I am glad that as far as IT is concerned, both in
oracle & UNIX the exposure of practical work is
immensely good.”
……………….. Nidhi Goel, student
The Course of ADBT is designed in a
professional yet exhaustive manner having the right
combination of Banking and Technology as the name
suggests. The course curriculum introduces us to each
and every sphere of banking in detail keeping in view
that being IT students; we are totally novice to this
field. The curriculum of Technology is also designed as
per the latest demand in the concerned field. And its my
privilege that I am being taught many things in
technology from scratch and my doubts are being
cleared at each
……….. Jayshree Nimesh, student
(Placed in Nurture software ltd)
The second Batch of ADBT is going to start shortly.
For details visit our website-www.pnbiit.com
April-June-2008
36