[Banking] - Core Banking System

From : http://www.indiastudychannel.com/resources/79870-CBS-Core-Banking-System.aspx
Core Banking system or CBS is one of the recent developments in the field of banking, and has proved to be very useful. It is a facility provided by banks in which a person, having an account in one branch, can operate his account, in another branch. This has become possible, because each account holder is given a specialised, computerised and unique account number. In simple terms, CBS is a type of banking, in which a person, who opens a bank account in a particular branch of a bank, will be a customer of the bank, rather than being a customer of a particular branch. Therefore, he can transact anywhere, at any time.

The prime features of the CBS are that it facilitates banking operations like ATM's, Electronic fund, Transfers, Telebanking, Internet banking etc. Moreover, introduction of new facilities and products wouldn't be a time-consuming process, and branch clearings would become instantaneous.

The CBS is presently hosted on two Sun fire V6900R servers, clustered in an active passive mode. Both the servers and the two storage boxes are connected to both the switches for redundancy. Power for these servers is received from two additional similar capacity UPS, installed as standby. The application software is developed in COBOL and the version being used is version 10.0. M/s. Lasersoft Infosystems Ltd., Chennai, has developed this software.

The banks have to implement a three tier architecture, for wide Area Network. The branches are connected to a Zonal centre, by 64KBPS, based line, from telephone corporations like BSNL. The district layers are in turn connected to the data centre, and disaster recovery centre, by 2 MBPS based lines.

CBS has facilitated better operational efficiency by ensuring improved house keeping and preventing seepage of income. Inter branch reconciliation has become faster and accurate. Users can log in only from their authorised branches and data access is restricted to their levels. For recovery of disaster, two servers, installed in the primary site ensure high availability and achieve fault tolerance through hardware redundancies and protection against component failures.

Many banks have covered 100% of their business of the bank under CBS, and intend to bring all their branches under WAN connectivity. The centralized database has enabled introduction of new products and services apart from bringing about work simplification at branches.Therefore, CBS has been effective, in bringing about a radical change in the field of banking, and we can also expect further developments in this field, because of this system.