Data Quality for Decision Support – The Indian Banking Scenario

To face the challenges posed by new techno-savvy market players, the Public Sector Banks (PSB) and the old private banks in India, have introduced Core Banking Solutions (CBS) to replace disparate branch automation systems. CBS provides centralized online banking operational database which can be exploited for building Decision Support System (DSS) in key areas. While promptness of data is ensured, other data quality needs are to be appraised before implementing any such DSS. Hence an assessment of data quality in two key areas – Customer Relationship Management and Borrower Behaviour was carried out for a sample bank for data profiling, inter-field consistency, attribute value dependent constraints, domain constraints. The study has identified critical areas for data quality improvement both for legacy data that has been migrated and new data being captured by the CBS. Measures for data cleaning and implementation of additional constraints at the database or application level are proposed for improvement of data quality for implementing these DSS.