HT Bureau
Guwahati, Sept 13: HDFC Bank, India’s largest private sector bank recently became the first bank in the country to issue an Electronic Bank Guarantee (e-BG) in partnership with National E-Governance Services Limited (NeSL). Paper based, time-consuming process has been eliminated with the new electronic bank guarantees that can be processed, stamped, verified and delivered instantly with enhanced security. This is a transformational change, and the Bank will migrate to e-BG to benefit all its customers.
Paper-based bank guarantees takes 3-5 days to complete the process of physical pick up from the bank, courier to the beneficiary, stamp it and re-verify it. Besides there was no central repository for bank guarantees until now. Bringing in efficiency of time, e0BG offers enhanced security. Physical stamping has been eliminated and replaced with e-Stamping and with e-BG, the applicant and beneficiary can instantly view a bank guarantee on the NeSL portal.
Bhavesh Zaveri, Group head – Operations, HDFC Bank said on this occasion, “Digitisation is an important enabler for our vision, to be recognised as a Bank which offers a distinctive customer experience. We remain committed to designing products that make digital banking simple, contextual and highly secure. Digitisation of issuance of BG is a transformational step towards increasing the ease of doing business for MSMEs who are major applicants for bank guarantees. HDFC Bank will migrate to e-BG platform completely in order to expedite the issuance of BGs for our customers.”
e-BG has been developed in consultation with NeSL, CVC-CBI committee and IBA to simplify the process and eliminate the possibility of fraud and manipulation. E-BG will be issued on the NeSL portal through an API-based digital workflow.
Debajyoti Ray Chaudhuri, MD & CEO of NeSL said, “An Electronic Bank Guarantee or e-BG eliminates the physical documentation usually associated with a bank guarantee, and the e-BG becomes available in a digital form to the beneficiary. It was a pleasure to be associated with HDFC Bank in implementing e-BG and we are extremely happy that HDFC Bank became the first bank to issue such an e-BG using the NeSL paperless e-Stamping DDE platform.”
