What is the importance of Corporate Reporting?

XIBMS – Bank Profile XIBMS – Bank Profile  Bank of Baroda (BOB), India’s fifth largest bank and prominent among the global top 200, has a century’s financial experience backing it. With assets in excess of USD 32 billion, the bank has a network of over 2800 branches and offices, and about 700 ATMs. Bank of Baroda offers a wide range of banking products and financial services to 29 million global corporate and retail customers, through various delivery channels, its specialized subsidiaries and affiliates in the areas of investment banking, credit cards and asset management. Today, Bank of Baroda has international presence across 5 continents, with a network of 71 offices in 25 countries, including branches of the bank, its subsidiaries and the representative offices. The bank also has a joint venture in Zambia with 9 branches. The bank\’s international operations today contribute around 20% to its global business and well as over 30% to its net profits. Growing its presence across new geographies and strengthening its equity in existing markets, Bank of Baroda is on the path to establish itself ‘round the clock around the globe’. The bank is exploring out-of-the-box means to identify novel ways to tailor its growing repertoire of products and services to meet segment-specific requirements across geographies. Automation-led process and cost optimization, orchestration of the offices network and greater attention to compliance with global regulations are aggressively being focused on to help the bank achieve its ambitious goals. Bank of Baroda, gearing to leverage the opportunities that the flat world presents and nimbly skirting its threats, is charting a coherent strategy to not just cope but break path and emerge with the winning edge, in the changing global business scenario. Key Business Drivers: Seize the opportunity to globalize The mid-eighties marked the beginning of the shift to a buyers` market in the banking space, and Bank of Baroda, was among the first to grasp this pressing imperative. The bank orchestrated its business strategies around the centrality of the customer. It diversified rapidly into the areas of merchant banking, housing finance, credit cards and mutual funds. The strategy also entailed the sustained development of a string of segment – specific branches entrenching operations in profitable markets, the world over. The drive was to revamp overseas operations and intensify structural changes across geographies to provide services across segments with focus on the Indian Diaspora. The bank sought to take to market a vast array of international banking and services catering to the needs of exporters and importers in India and abroad. The bank also decided to capitalize on international markets to arrange for funds for the Indian corporate sector by way of syndicated loans, bonds, floating rate notes, foreign currency convertible bonds and credit-linked notes with UK operations playing a major role in this emphasis. The bank\’s Global Syndication Centre at London sought to intensify focus on loan syndications and investments in the international markets. With growing opportunities in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East region, the bank also planned to set up Regional Syndication Centers in Dubai and Hong Kong. A crucial facet of this plan was the technology-led re-engineering of the operational efficiencies of its global offices. The bank was clear that along with this business orchestration, it would need a technology rejuvenation, to deliver an improved and homogenous customer experience across the global divide, ease governance and MIS with a unified view of its international operations and improve its risk and cost management strategies. The Search for a Solution After a grueling partner-identification process, that saw the participation and evaluation of several leading solution vendors, Bank of Baroda announced its decision to journey through the global technology-focused business transformation program, ably partnered by Finacle universal banking solution. A centralized and cohesive technology platform to support rapid product introduction, orchestrated operations, increased scalability and true flexibility across international operations, driving down costs and governance hassles, was key to the bank’s transformation strategy and Finacle assured Bank of Baroda of all this and more. Solution Overview One solution, One strategy, Global Roll-out The implementation focused on enabling Bank of Baroda with a consolidated, centralized technology platform, to fuel its growth engine across geographic divides, in the flattening world. The scenario at that juncture was that Bank of Baroda’s foreign offices across 25 nations, deployed various technology platforms and at least 8 different solutions, to drive its operations. Replacing these disparate systems dotting the Bank of Baroda chain, worldwide, with Finacle’s robust unified technology platform, was the first goal that the implementation team sought to achieve. UK was the most complex, with a host of operations and complicated areas of functioning in both core banking as well as treasury domains. The isolated SWIFT systems, each operating independently across Bank of Baroda’s global offices, was a focus area for the bank, as the business demanded the efficiencies of Straight Through Processing (STP) and unhindered transactions. This was one of the major requirements at the UK territory which had a major volume in correspondent bank operations and acted as the gateway for GBP transactions for Bank of Baroda. The implementation strategy A cost effective yet efficient strategy was evidently needed for execution of the project. The key driver that catalyzed the journey to success was the process that was set after drawing upon the huge expertise of implementation experts. The process that was used for implementation was a set of exercises defined with clear cut objectives. The entry and exit criteria were defined, with each individual aware of one’s role and the expected deliverables. This helped in deriving the maximum out of every activity, and to augment this, a common Business Process Definition (BPD) strategy was used to further save time and effort, while minimizing the life span of the implementation cycle. A common BPD was created in general for all the International territories, which was a set of common parameters that came out after multiple rounds of discussions with the key individuals involved. This common BPD would later serve