The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is the central bank and monetary authority of India. It is an independent apex monetary authority and plays a vital role in monitoring and managing the financial system of the India. As a regulator and supervisor of the Indian banking system it ensures financial stability & public confidence in the banking system. It plays the critical role of macro-economic management and supports development initiatives and programs of the Central Government.
In addition to framing and managing monetary policies, the RBI lends fiduciary services to banks and Central and State Governments and executes multiple functions like issuing currency, managing foreign exchange, working as a bank of government and as banker of scheduled commercial banks, etc.
Over six decades of its existence, RBI had added many systems and applications to its IT ecosystem to meet policy and regulatory requirements and address security concerns. These systems were created for different departments by different vendors to suit different needs at different times. Most of these came into being to solve an immediate policy change request or a new policy implementation requirement. Needless to say, the platforms, hardware and software were different – more importantly, these systems were operating in silos and this posed business and technical challenges that were time consuming and incurred heavy maintenance costs.
Multiple systems with different hardware and software, with some of them being legacy and outdated, made integration an extremely difficult task. This had become the biggest roadblock to policy changes, especially the ones that needed to be implemented across the ecosystem. Data issues, inconsistent reporting and the lack of a centralized view posed a huge risk in a world where security breaches and were becoming a big threat to the global financial sector.
RBI wanted to implement a centralized Core banking solution to cover all its offices including banking and accounting operations. The objective was to implement a Core Banking solution (CBS) that has cross functional and seamless integration of banking applications as well as banking operations performed by select departments. It was looking for the following features:
From a business perspective, RBI was clear that the CBS should offer products and services in the capacity of ‘Banker to Banks’ and ‘Banker to Government’ and cover the following:
The Core Banking System for a central bank is significantly different from the Core Banking System in a commercial Bank. There are several functional and business requirements that are specific to large central banks.The system needs to support very high TPDPA and the bulk of the load in the system will be from RTGS, NEFT and portal channel transactions.
Intellect’s Quantum Central Banking Solution (QCBS) offered exactly what RBI was looking for. QCBS is designed specifically for Central banks, unlike other systems that use force-fitted versions of commercial core banking solutions. It unifies four universes – governments, banks & FIs, cash and securities. The key differentiator of QCBS lies in underlying technology design, particularly when rich functionality is a prerequisite. It drives four clear mandates
Intellect implemented the world’s first cash-security integrated Core Banking System for RBI. It also provided full support for a smooth and secure transition from several disparate systems, along with an operating capacity to process over 100 million transactions per day.
The progressive modernization initiative helped RBI move away from silos and unlock significant value across its huge IT ecosystem. Apart from increased financial and operational efficiencies, the immediate benefit from seamless integration of all its systems, product engines and channels is that RBI can quickly implement new policies or bring changes to existing ones in days as opposed to months or years before. Process automation also reduced manual intervention and staffing requirements. The Intellect QCBS at RBI is fully equipped to meet its current as well as future requirements be it from a policy or a security standpoint.
Trusted by the central banks in many countries including India, Seychelles, Ethiopia, Sweden, Lesotho and now Armenia, the Intellect QCBS solution deploys a formidable array of advanced technology frameworks including Extreme Account Posting (XAP), Run Time Re Use (RTRU), and Look Ahead Processing (LAP) technologies. Intellect is the proud recipient of the Payments Provider of the Year Award-2016 and Technology Provider of the Year Award-2015 from the Central Banking Forum. Intellect also won the prestigious Asian Banker award for the 'Best Central Bank Technology Project-2013' for this large scale modernization initiative at Reserve Bank of India.
