Canara Bank partners with Kyndryl to modernize its IT operations

IT infrastructure services provider Kyndryl announced on Thursday that it has engaged with Canara Bank, one of the largest public sector banks in India, to optimize the bank's business services and operations and modernize its IT infrastructure. As Canara Bank's trusted IT partner, Kyndryl will enhance the bank's end-to-end IT operations and streamline service delivery across core banking, IT infrastructure, applications, and network operations.

Kyndryl separated from IBM in November 2021 to become a standalone business focused on managed infrastructure services. The company's solution will provide Canara Bank with a comprehensive view of its business services, risk mitigation using advanced capabilities and tools, and a focus on service availability while enhancing observability and reliability. This will help Canara Bank enhance its customer service experiences.

Kyndryl will also deploy a unified digital IT services dashboard to provide employees with a single view of Canara Bank's key performance indicators, tools dashboard, and knowledge repositories. Additionally, Kyndryl will implement advanced tools to create sophisticated preventive and predictive intelligence capabilities. This will help reduce incidents through auto-remediation, shorten maintenance timeframes, and improve application availability. The platform will be optimized to recognize and remediate IT failures and anomalies within the bank's infrastructure and provide data-driven insights, such as outage predictions, that will boost the bank's control over its mission-critical operations.

Lingraju Sawkar, President of Kyndryl India, said the company's approach is focused on "ensuring Canara Bank's business continuity, mitigating risk, and enhancing the bank's key business performance indicators."

"Kyndryl brings decades of expertise and experience managing mission-critical IT systems for global banking and financial services customers. Our relentless focus on delivery and innovation, our strategic approach to transformation, and the value we place on people make Kyndryl an excellent fit for Canara Bank as it progresses, along with India, on the digital transformation journey," he said.

Canara Bank, like many other public sector banks (PSUs), has embarked on a rigorous digitization journey. With over 11 crore customers through a network of over 9,500 branches and 12,000 ATMs spread across the country, the bank launched a mobile application in August 2023 called Canara Digital Rupee. This app allows users to scan merchant UPI QR codes and pay using digital currency. The Canara Digital Rupee app is part of the Reserve Bank of India's Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) pilot project. The CBDC is a digital version of the Indian rupee issued by the RBI.

"Our goal is to improve operational excellence, profitability, and scale to become the 'Best Bank to Bank with' in India. We are investing in enhancing our technology core, service and process frameworks, and delivery capabilities to provide state-of-the-art banking services to our customers," said K Satyanarayana Raju, MD & CEO of Canara Bank. "Kyndryl's skills and expertise in building, operating, and managing critical technology for Indian banks will help us build the future we've envisioned."

In November, Kyndryl launched banking and financial industry services for Google Cloud Customers to securely store and protect their confidential and sensitive data. The service focuses on automation, security, and making compliance easier for customers.