Central Bank of India (CBI), one of the largest public sector banks in India has awarded IT solutions supplier Wipro a five-year total outsourcing agreement to provide state-of-the-art, technology-driven, core banking solution for seven sponsored Regional Rural banks (RRBs).

The engagement will allow the Central Bank of India to achieve its objective of financial inclusion and bring low cost and efficient banking services to the rural masses.

The Centralised Core Banking Project is expected to facilitate efficient internal operations for the seven Regional Rural Banks. It is also expected to provide the competitive edge by enabling regional rural banks offer innovative products and services at optimum costs.

The Core Banking project would integrate 2,000 sites which include branches, extension counters, satellite offices, regional offices, head offices and back offices in a phased manner. The solution would also offer alternate delivery channels like Internet banking and mobile (including SMS Alerts) banking.

Wipro will also setup a 24-hour centralised Helpdesk facility for the project covering applications, Data Centre, networks, security and end user systems.

The software has been provided by Infosys using “Finacle” along with other standard products such as ALM, Govt. Business, Internet, ATM, EMS, AML etc. With this, RRBs of Central Bank of India will be in compliance with statutory & Regulatory requirements including MIS.

The contract is the outcome of a competitive bidding process which attracted several global and Indian IT majors.

Earlier, last week, Wipro signed a 7 year Total Outsourcing contract with 5 RRBs sponsored by UCO Bank, a leading Public Sector Bank, for implementing a Core Banking Solution (CBS) across 803 branches of the sponsored RRBs. The contract with Central Bank is the second in the series of wins for Wipro, related to driving financial inclusion through RRBs.