'Cloud Is The Future For Cooperative Banks'

"Cloud brings down the transaction and customer acquisition cost," observed Saillesh D. Jadhav, Vice Chairman, DMK Jaoli Sahakari Bank. Because we are operating on the cloud, we are able to go for mobile banking for our customers through other service providers, he added. Jadhav was speaking in a panel discussion on 'Leveraging cloud and data centre for business benefits in cooperative banks & other financial services' at the at the BW Businessworld's 'Cooperative Conclave Maharashtra 2017' in Mumbai.

Explaining their operations in the rural areas, Suresh A. Shan, Head - IT & Innovation, Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services said, "We create data centres in rural areas with the help of government and vendors as the case may be." We concentrate on electricity and connectivity in these regions. As a group, we cater to rural areas with a lot of financial products which cooperative banks can make use of these and operate on the cloud, Shan further explained.

"There is no future for banks without the cloud," Prasanna Lohar, Head - Technology, Innovation & Architecture, DCB Bank went a step further adding the examples of few branch-less banks operating abroad completely on the cloud. "It is a matter of time, banks in India going that way," he added.

However, Bhaskar Rao, Asst. General Manager - IT, Vasai Vikas Sahakari Bank Limited opined that it is difficult for small cooperative banks in rural areas to adopt data centre, but easy to adopt cloud. "The cost for implementing the data centre is huge for small banks like ours," Rao added. He cited lack of resources and human capital as the main reason behind the inability. And at the same time, Rao pointed out that the cooperative banks doing a lot of personal services to their customers may be better than a nationalised bank or a private bank.

Jadhav opined that cooperative banks should look at the cloud in a comprehensive way so that it exists in the eco system and co-exist in a multi-environment. He also underlined the importance of doing away with junk data before the adoption of cloud. "This can really make a difference to your bottom-line," he added.

"One should know the customers' need, the geography of the area of operation etc. to be a successful cloud service provider," said Piyush Somani, Founder & CEO, ESDS Software Solution while making his concluding remark as the moderator of the panel.