Case Study: Utkarsh Small Finance Bank goes live with comprehensive core banking

Client Overview

Utkarsh Small Finance Bank is a premier micro-finance institution in India with operations across 10 states. It wanted to leverage its expertise and create a customer centric bank to provide financial and non-financial support to the under privileged segments of society and impart self-employment skills to its members. It applied for a license to set up a Small Finance Bank (SFB) and was one of the 10 chosen players to receive an in-principle approval from the Reserve Bank of India.

Requirement

With an aggressive plan to rapidly on-board customers, Utkarsh was looking for a robust solution that could scale up on demand and help achieve its vision of acquiring more than 6 million customers by 2021. Employing an Omni-channel experience across multiple platforms was critical to reach out to the unbanked population in rural areas and onboard customers on the go.

Product / Solution provided

The bank needed a complete IT solution provider to ease the transition from a micro-finance to a small finance bank. After a careful study and analysis, the bank found Intellect Core Banking System to be the best fit. The entire solution was implemented in just 10 months and the bank went live in January, 2016. The following are the modules successfully implemented and running at Utkarsh Bank.

• Core Banking Solution
• Internet and Mobile Banking Solution
• Tablet Banking
• Anti-Money Laundering
• Trade Finance
• Treasury
• Asset-Liability Management (ALM)
• Fixed Asset Management Solution(FAMS)
• Loan Management System (LMS)

Key Achievements

• Omni-channel banking experience: Intellect has partnered with the bank at every step of the transformation. Today the bank is able to provide a better service through Intellect’s CBS integrated with Internet and Mobile banking applications giving the bank a big edge against its competition. Hosted on cloud which allows remote access through frugal networks.
• Swift and Smooth transition of the bank from Microfinance to SFB: Intellect has partnered with the bank at every step of the transformation. ADF Technology along with Intellect’s AML and ALM modules have been implemented for RBI regulatory reporting. The bank’s treasury operations are carried out through Intellect Treasury.
• End-to-End Implementation of Hardware, Software, Cloud Hosting , Network services and Hand-held devices: Intellect partnered with the bank not just as a solution provider but as a system integrator. Customized End-to-End Digitization and Infrastructure overhaul provided by Intellect is helping the bank to cope with its new role and improve performance.
• Go-Live in less than 10 Months: The bank earned its in-principle license with a condition by regulator that they have to launch operations by March 2017. That meant Intellect had less than a year for implementation. Intellect adopted AIM (Accelerated Implementation Methodology), which combines the best of conventional and Agile models. This helped to Go-live in less than 10 months. This is a huge achievement taking into account the huge volume of Data Migration, Hosting on Cloud and Integration with a host of 3rd party systems.

Business Impact

The following are the Growth indicators since the bank went live on Intellect Digital Core

• Customer onboarding time has been reduced significantly using e-kyc (AADHAAR) and Bio-metric handheld devices.
• Live in 714 branches. 278 new branches were added since 2017
• The bank crossed its target of adding 6 million customers and currently has over 12 million customers. The bank has added more than 3 million customers between FY20-21 and FY 21-22.
• 2.5 Million + transaction volume recorded in FY 21-22. The transaction volume increased by 46% since the previous year.
• Intellect product configurator enabled the bank to launch new offerings faster.