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August/September Contents 

Sufis - wisdom against
 violence

 Sufi poet saints

 50 years of mountain
 climbing


 Interviews with:
 Ajaz Anwar
 
Iqbal Hussain
 
Kamil Mumtaz

 Heritage cities:
 Taxila
 Taxila Dharmrajika
 Harappa
 Bhera - Part I
 
Bhera - Part II
 Gujranwala

 
 

Cotton - the fibre of
 civilisation


 
Cotton textiles of
 South Asia

 Handlooms & Dyes

 Hiran Minar

 Basant

 Lahore Gymkhana

 
 
Business/Technology
 B2B - Part I

 
B2B - Part II

 
Optical Networks I
 
Optical Networks II

 
Role of Internet in
 S Asian development


 
Technology and
 investment in US
 stock markets


 
Security & Trust in
 Internet banking


 Telecom & software
 - trends & future in
 South Asia


 
China & India - major
 players by 2025


 
Pakistan - IT Markets
 
Part I
 
Part II
 
Part III
 
Part IV
 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

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 Page  2  of  6

Security and Trust in Internet Banking

(cntd)

by

Salman Minhas

 

First published November 2001
Copyright the-south-asian.com

 

The South Asian Banking scene

Only 2 Highly Automated Banks

Very few Banks in South Asia have state-of-the-art automation. Some cite trade unions in India as a barrier, some blame the poor quality of the paper currency notes for ATM’s. There are a few exceptions.

-- HDFC Bank under A. Puri – ex- Citibanker [ see The-South-Asian.com Jan 2000 ] spent about a billion rupees on Information Technology to place HDFC at the forefront of Technology based banking in India. HDFC has 1 million customers served by 350 ATMs. Profits soared Rs 1.2 billion from Rs 200 million in 1996. HDFC expanded aggressively to 123 Branches in 43 cities / towns . Each Branch has between 4-8 staff supported by networked computers and ATMs.

-- ICICI Bank [ K.V. Kamath is ex-ADB and director & CEO of its parent ], Profits increased Rs. 1.07 billion from Rs. 170 million in 1996. It has 86 Branches in 50 cities / towns.

South Asian Banks - Bad Loans & Lack of Automation .

---The 27 Indian State owned Banks have about 15 % to 50 % bad loans . The Pakistan State owned banks are in a similar shape , and it has taken the efforts of ex-Citibankers such as Shaukat Tarin to clean up the bad loans of United Bank [ UBL], and Union bank .

-- In talking to a major Chartered Accounting firm in Delhi , it appears that because Accounts Reconciliation is manual in most Indian State banks , the banks’ Assets & Liabilities are completed skewed and out of date .

-- The Bombay Broker Harshad Mehta, took advantage of this time lag of settlement in a manual banking system to effectively play the Bombay Stock Market using Bonds as capital to do highly leveraged trading.

A fossilised bureaucracy in the Government sectors [ with few exceptions ] meanwhile drags its feet over these new technologies .

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