IBM analytics on at Central Bank of India

MUMBAI, INDIA: IBM today announced that Central Bank of India is leveraging IBM analytics to radically transform its financial management processes which includes activities ranging from budgeting to forecasting to liquidity management. The Central Bank of India is now one of the few public sector banks achieving complete automation of corporate performance management activity on a bottoms-up approach, as per what the announcement added.

The convergence of a number of factors including the constantly changing

regulatory environment, as well as the desire to uncover deeper customer

insight from massive data, were the key drivers behind the Bank's decision

to streamline its financial systems. The company states that as a result of IBM's solution for corporate performance management, the company is now able to gain better insight into branch and regional office performance, allowing for further flexibility and quicker shifts in strategy to drive improved results while also maintaining regulatory compliance.

"With the use of analytics, the Central Bank of India has moved away from spreadsheet based planning to a smarter process that analyzes daily financial data based on actual performance and potential for growth. Equipped with specialized planning features, and simplified data capturing at the branch and regional office level, the IBM solution has helped the Bank to uncover new sources of customer value."

"With the rapid explosion of Big Data, collecting, sourcing and analyzing real-time data from multiple sources is a growing challenge for banks," said Jeby Cherian, Vice President and Managing Partner, Global Business Services, IBM India/South Asia.

The entire budgeting exercise of the Bank, as further added, is now conducted through IBM's solution which cuts planning cycle time in half and significantly improves accuracy of financial reporting by automating previously time consuming manual processes and ensuring that systems across the Bank's locations and product lines are interconnected. This enables the Bank to get real-time insight on performance efficiency as well as the capability to track deposits, loans and non-performing loans data on a daily basis.

Another key part is the implementation of Static Asset Liability Management Solution which enables the company to reduce liquidity risk and also minimize impact of interest rate and foreign exchange rate movements. As such, the Bank has achieved total automation of this tedious and time consuming process by consolidating approximately 7.5 million deals and trade positions across the company.

"The power of analytics is that it gives us more confidence in our financial reporting, leading to faster, more responsive decision-making." said M V Tanksale, Chairman and Managing Director, Central Bank of India.

"With Single Data Repository solutions, the Bank can gain more visibility inside its own business as well as identify more profitable customers. Thus, these solutions provide great levers for us to identify cross-sell and up-sell opportunities and increase customer wallet share."