NABARD joins hands with NetApp on data centres for cooperative banks

THE apex development bank in India, NABARD, (National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development) has brought India's cooperative banking sector onto a Core Banking Solution (CBS) platform. This will give...
India's rural sector access to basic banking facilities such as Any Branch Banking, NEFT, RTGS and access to ATMs.
NABARD has entered into a partnership with data storage solutions firm NetApp for such an ambitious project.
Hitherto, the cooperative banks were operating either in a manual environment or partially computerized standalone environment. This resulted in multiple technology platforms.
With CBS, banks will be in a position to leverage technological solutions to help increase financial inclusion in rural India.
Customers of these banks will also be able to avail facilities like any branch banking and e-transfer of funds.
“Through CBS, we have been able to reach out to India’s rural sector and through the deployment of NetApp’s solution in the project, being implemented by leading IT vendors, we have taken a step closer in achieving our goal of financial inclusion in India,” NBARD chief general manager Subrata Gupta said.
To ensure faster transactions and comply with regulatory requirements stipulated by the Reserve Bank, NABARD said it was imperative to bring all the cooperatives onto a technology platform, which would be cost effective and efficient.
This will also enable the government to transfer benefits to account holders based on their Aadhaar numbers.
Of the 201 banks with 6,818 branches under the NABARD Project, 199 banks and 6,795 branches are fully on CBS as on March 31, 2014.
“For data and disaster recovery centres, NABARD partners with technology providers including NetApp by deploying NetApp’s FAS storage systems as a private cloud,” NetApp said in a statement.
FAS storage systems simplifies data management across the CBS platform, from the local office to the data centre to the cloud.
“We believe that technology has the ability to drive economic growth in the Indian rural sector. We are delighted that NetApp has been able to bring banking closer to many Indians,” NetApp President (India and SAARC) Anil Valluri said.