Regional IT group wins award over Seylan Bank project

NCS Group, a leading regional information technology and communications engineering service provider in the Asia Pacific and Middle East regions, said it has won the prestigious The Asian Banker IT Implementation Awards 2008 for Best Branch Automation and Networking Project Award 2007 for its project implementation at Seylan Bank.

The awards, held in conjunction with The Asian Banker Summit, were announced at the summit at the Melia Hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam on March 17, the company said.

The award winning project, the Palm Top Banking (PTB) system designed and implemented by NCS for Seylan Bank was successfully rolled out in October last year. This system enables Seylan Bank’s Business Development Officers (BDOs) to conduct traditional branch banking and financial transactions outside the physical branch environment and in the remote areas such as villages and customers’ premises.

It enables Seylan Bank to create a mobile bank branch immediately and without the need of physical branch setup which would require a huge investment in fixed and recurring costs. NCS said.

Armed with a personal digital assistant, a mini printer and cash, Seylan Bank’s motorcycle-bound BDOs would bring banking and financial services to the Sri Lankan population. Through the system, the BDO is able to retrieve relevant customer information, aiding his understanding of the customer’s total relationship with the bank or the finance company. Lim Eng, Chief Executive Officer of NCS Group, said, “We believe that Seylan Bank not only is the first bank in Sri Lanka to offer such services, it is also the first in Asia.

This initiative taps on the wireless and mobile technologies to introduce a new secured channel to serve the customers and also extend banking services to the untapped customer segment with limited or no access to the traditional banking institutions due to geographical and technology constraints.”