With managing environmental change and sustainability becoming a burning priority know how Banks can go for green solutions and create energy efficient systems.

1. Green solutions for banks
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2. Green solutions
With managing environmental change and products and services, investment in bonds
sustainability becoming a burning priority, a and mutual funds linked to environmental
number of socially responsible corporations investments
are doing their best to save the earth through
• Priority or preferential lending to renewable
initiatives to reduce consumption of resources
energy or afforestation projects etc.
like energy, power, water and paper and
regenerate resources like clean air and natural • Setting up of solar powered ATMs
vegetation. Stringent environmental norms and
• Fee waivers and concessions for environmentally-
policies, such as Green accounting are lending
friendly residential projects
direction to the sustainability effort of industries,
including banking and financial services. • New green model of branch banking, in which
branches recycle water, use natural light, and
While banks, like other organizations are
conduct paperless transactions as far as possible.
implementing eco-friendly practices in their
day-to-day operations, as one of the prime • Discretion on extending credit to companies
movers of economic growth and industrial that don’t comply with ISO14000 norms
activity, they are in a position to do much more.
Indeed, banks can effect large-scale change Banking technology vendors can also contribute
by supporting sustainable investment, ethical to Green Banking by making their products
lending or green businesses as part of what energy efficient. Banking software solutions
they do; they can, for instance, “persuade” large running on multiple channels – branch, ATM,
borrowers across industries – from real estate to Internet and mobile – do consume energy and
power to pharmaceuticals – to take a greener if they could be designed to save even one
approach to business. watt per terminal per day, it would make a very
sizeable impact.
• Current Green Banking initiatives come in
many forms: Creation of green financial
Bank Number Average Power Power Total Power Power Total
of Number Usage Usage Number Usage Usage Power
Branches of (units in a of (units) After Saved
Terminals per Day of Terminals Software/ by
Using hour) 8 Hours in All Hardware Bank
Banking (units) Branches Optimi- per
Software zation* Day
(units) (units)
Bank1 1000 30 2 16 3000 48000 45000 3000
*Assuming energy efficient software and hardware optimizations save 1 unit of energy per day per terminal
Is it possible to make software energy efficient? this is indeed possible. Research shows
Can software reduce a desktop’s power significant potential for saving energy through a
consumption in a bank? Can mobile banking combination of hardware and software
software play a role in extending the battery optimization techniques.
power of a mobile platform?
Some measures to build energy efficient
Emerging technology trends suggest that banking software could be:
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3. Developing features that reduce paper usage
in branch banking
Software vendors could develop biometrics- By supporting electronic storage of regulatory
enabled software to enable customers to access reports signed digitally by authorized signatories,
safe deposit lockers, and thereby help banks Core Banking software can help banks cut
do away with paper registers. Kiosks can down significantly on paper consumption and
replace written applications for taking requests storage costs.
for cash, bank drafts, etc. Digital money transfer
via NFC or mobile wallet is a greener and more
efficient way of moving funds.
Software optimizations
Algorithms, protocols, data efficiency and of lines of code and generates output quickly
context aware methods, tools and technologies to free up the CPU for low-power or additional
supporting the creation of energy efficient tasks. Although this is a general goal of
software should be leveraged to make banking computational efficiency, it might be a good
software more “power aware”. An energy efficient idea to progress towards it from the software
program is one, which uses minimum number development stage itself.
Hardware optimizations
Software vendors should partner with banks consumption has become a priority for these
to co-create software designed to interact companies as well. Currently, there are tools
efficiently with the bank’s OS, third party to monitor an application’s performance but
applications and hardware. For instance, they none to check its energy consumption during
could design an ATM, which goes into power various transactions. Here again, partnering
saving mode when not in use. with the right vendors can help banks derive
maximum advantage from opportunities to save
Earlier, OS and microprocessor manufacturers
software energy.
aimed at performance efficiency; however,
optimizing both performance and energy
Combination of hardware and
software optimizations
Energy efficiency can be improved by either of powering and cooling the system. It is
increasing the number of operations per unit particularly important in large installations such
of energy consumed or decreasing the amount as data centers, where power and cooling costs
of energy consumed per operation. Increased can be sizable.
energy efficiency reduces the operational cost
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4. • Banks can reap benefit by switching to providers and consultants should proactively
thin computing and using virtual desktop educate traditional banks about this
infrastructure (VDI). Standard Bank’s London emerging option.
office successfully adopted this model to
• Using energy efficient GUI for both core and
cut down energy consumption by one third.
mobile banking, and the right browser or
National Australia Bank has set a goal to
application for desktop and mobile banking
realize 90% virtualization of servers and
respectively can prolong mobile battery
turn the bank, including its data center,
life, lower electricity costs and minimize
carbon neutral.
environmental impact.
• Cloud computing offers another way to
conserve energy and IT budgets. Software
Client education and energy consulting
Software companies could offer energy could guide banking clients on how to optimize
consulting to clients as a value added service energy or evaluate their solutions from an
at every stage of a project. For instance, they optimization standpoint.
Conclusion
If banking technology vendors were to energy savings, thereby serving the interests of
collaborate with banks to create energy both parties, and of society in general.
efficient systems, it could result in large scale
References
1. www.pcmag.com/ar ticle2/0,2817,238280 4. Energy Management for Commercial Servers
8,00.asp www.vmware.com/files/pdf/partners/desktop/
Wyse-CaseStudy-StandardBank.pdf
2. www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/
mplus/themes/MPlus/lightBoxNews.php?news
3. www.cse.msu.edu/~cse891/Sect601 CaseStudy/ Link=aprl23_1
BiometricsBankingIndustry.pdf 5. www.finextra.com/
Jaya Sudha Mahajanam
Lead Consultant, Infosys
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5. About Finacle
Finacle from Infosys partners with banks to transform process, product
and customer experience, arming them with ‘accelerated innovation’
that is key to building tomorrow’s bank.
For more information, contact Finacleweb@infosys.com www.infosys.com/finacle
© 2012 Infosys Limited, Bangalore, India, Infosys believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date; such information is subject to change without notice. Infosys
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