Chaitanya Godavari Grameena Bank is a regional rural bank operating in Andhra Pradesh, sponsored by Andhra Bank, which holds 35% of the equity. The Andhra Pradesh government holds 15% stake and the government of India 50%. The bank has 218 branches. It has recently undertaken several technology upgrades. Here are some highlights.
In April 2018, the bank installed a hardware security module at its data center and DR site. In December 2019, it upgraded 4 database servers from 40 GB RAM to 128 GB RAM and 4 application servers from 40 GM RAM to 80 GB RAM. Alongside, it also installed a second processor. The R&D server too was upgraded with to 8 GB RAM and a second processor installed.
T. Kameshwar Rao, chairman of the bank, says after this upgradation, our branches are able to execute transactions very comfortably and our IT teams are able to execute batch jobs speedily. The bank’s 150 branches are provided with Airtel 512 kbps MPLS links since 1 April 2018. Says Rao: “After enhancement of bandwidth, the branches are able to generate reports and execute online service menus
very comfortably, resulting in good customer service.”
LAPTOPS
All the heads of departments at the head office and regional managers of 3 regions of the bank have been provided with laptops for operational use during tours. Rao says 8 HP brand i5 laptops have been provided to officers for conducting inspection/audit efficiently and conveniently. The older PCs at the branches have been replaced with 350 new HP brand PCs with AMD processors and Windows 10 Professional OS.”
RUPAY CARDS, ATM
The bank has issued around 60,000 EMV chip based RuPay debit cards to savings bank account holders. It has also installed 15 ATMs and one cash recycler during 2018-19. Additional passbook printers (Lipi PB2) have been installed at 50 branches help customers get their passbooks updated without any wait. Besides, all the branches now have Epson M200 multi-function inkjet printers, which are capable of printing, scanning and making copies. Rao claims this facilitates quicker and efficient correspondence.
NETWORK RACKS
The bank has replaced its 2 KVA UPS systems in 20 branches with 3 KVA Numeric Online UPS for meeting the increasing load. In 15 branches, 6U network racks are replaced with 9U racks for accommodating all the network equipment (Airtel MPLS modems, BSNL modems, routers, switches, etc) in a convenient manner.
TRANSACTION VOLUMES
The bank is using Finacle 7.0.16 version as its CBS. The license is for 1060 users and 850 concurrent users. It recorded the peak manual transactions of 63,000 on any day during November 2019 (both debit and credit). The number of peak financial transactions in terms of APBS, ACH, NEFT, RTGS, ATM, PoS, eComm, IMPS, mobile banking, UPI etc on any day during November 2019 was 149,000 and peak system generated transactions was 185,000. Peak transactions in the year in a day, ie on interest posting on SB accounts, was 1,714,000 on 3 October 2019.
The bank is projected to have 230 branches, 2,777,000 live customer accounts and 69,000 peak manual transaction during a month by March 2020. It will also scale up to 164,000 APBS, ACH, NEFT, RTGS, ATM, PoS, eComm, IMPS transactions and 203,000 peak system generated transactions on any day during the month.
STAFF TRAINING
The staff members of Chaitanya Godavari Grameena Bank are trained at the sponsor bank’s training establishment. According to Dr B.V. Ramana Rao Garu, GM, induction programs for newly joined officers and office assistants were conducted during October 2019 at APEX College, Hyderabad, wherein 59 newly joined officers and 55 office assistants were trained. Staff members were also trained at other training establishments, including BIRD, Mangaluru, ICRISAT, Hyderabad, CAB, Pune and at institutions located in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry.
Some122 employees received training under various programs such as advanced Excel tools, augmenting agriculture credit, emerging areas in horticulture and post-harvest management for bank credit, implementation of RTI Act, NPA and recovery management, preventive vigilance and disciplinary proceedings, sustainable rural livelihood, digital agriculture & IOT, project appraisal, entrepreneurial assessment and financing of MSMEs, emerging areas in horticulture, post-harvest management for bank credit, financing animal husbandry investments, payment system and card management, alternate delivery channels for digital banking, appraisal for agriculture projects, financing hi-tech agriculture & post-harvest instruments.
Ramana Rao says training programs in areas like early warning systems in all kinds of risks, technological analytics and new developments in fintech sector are also being planned.
