Established in 1963, APCOB is the apex bank in Andhra Pradesh. It is a government partnered bank and is committed to agricultural and rural development through the cooperatives. It operates through 22 district co-operative central banks (DCCBs) and Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies (PACs) in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India. The Bank is committed to agricultural and rural development through the Cooperatives.
APCOB showcases a unique experiment of Single Window Credit Delivery System, a first of its kind in the country under which, both investment and production credit for agriculture is provided at the grass root level through a single agency. It also extends financial support to Apex Cooperative Federations like MARKFED, APCO, FEDCON etc. It has also been providing direct finance to small and medium industries and agro-based units. For its urban clientele it provides banking facilities under attractive deposit schemes, safe deposit lockers, Clean & Secured Overdrafts, Consumer Durable Loans, Vehicle Loans, Gold Loans, Housing Loans and a host of other services.
Note:The Andhra Pradesh State Cooperative Bank Limited (APCOB), Vijayawada, is a Scheduled State Cooperative Bank for the State of Andhra Pradesh. Consequent on reorganization of the State of Andhra Pradesh, the Andhra Pradesh State Cooperative Bank has been reconstituted into TSCAB and residual Andhra Pradesh State Cooperative Bank Limited.
Andhra Pradesh, being at the helm of IT development in the country, had a clear vision to create a knowledge society by using Information Technology in all aspects of development and governance. It took various steps towards improving transparency and service to citizens across the state. Improving the services of APCOB was part of these initiatives.
APCOB was finding it difficult to provide same level of service to customers across all its DCCBs and PACs. Manual entries and reconciliations were tedious and time consuming while the lack of a centralized view of loans and balances meant that decisions could not be taken and / or implemented quickly. The immediate need was to provide speedy service to its clientele and enabling APCOB-DCCBs to effectively monitor and manage its banking services and operations. This would be a big step towards increasing its reach and furthering the vision of financial inclusion through rural banking. Initial studies revealed that it would be expensive to deploy independent core banking systems in each of its DCCBs and PAC. Poor telecom connectivity and low bandwidth would also be a major hurdle in rural areas. Moreover, integrating all the DCCBs and PACs would be another transformation project in itself. APCOB was therefore scouting for a light weight solution that would operate effectively even in lower bandwidth and connect seamlessly with a centralised system.
Intellect proposed to a host the Intellect Core Banking Solution on a single server at the APCOB headquarters at Hyderabad. This centralized deployment would then be made accessible to the 22 head offices, the DCCBs and its 569 branches through dialup/LL/VSAT or data card connectivity.
The intellect Core Banking System implementation at APCOB was a game changer. All 22 DCCBs with about 624 branches have moved from manual process to automation, resulting in significant improvement in the quality of services offered by APCOB.Launch of new products and schemes can be done in a few clicks and can be extended seamlessly across the APCOB infrastructure. This has been a big step towards providing timely support for the poor and needy, especially in the rural agricultural sector.