All About RBI’s Initiative Of Centralized Information Management System (CIMS) To Build The Next Level Regulatory Reporting

Updated On : September 2019

In April 2018, the RBI had announced the setting up of a data sciences lab to fruitfully utilize the power of big data analytics. The data sciences lab will help to improve forecasting, surveillance, and have early warning detection abilities which will help in policy formulation. The lab would have internal and external experts and analysts, trained in computer science, data analytics, statistics, economics, econometrics, and finance. To achieve this, the RBI issued an Expression of Interest (EOI) in July 2018 for identifying a solution provider for implementation of a Centralised Information Management System (CIMS) by overhauling the data warehouse of the bank.

The RBI wanted to hire a CIMS solution provider for the overhaul of the existing data warehouse and wanted the job to be carried out in different phases starting from understanding the bank's existing data warehouse, IT systems, providing software solutions to proposing every aspect of the required infrastructure and implementation of the new solution. This was a particularly significant announcement as the RBI believed that it has to understand public sentiment along with its structured data on the economy. In the US too, the Federal Reserve keeps an eye on the consumer price indices to predict job sentiment, inflation, and expectations in each quarter. For a long time, India had depended on numbers like the Wholesale Price Index. But in the last four to five years, it created a Consumer Price Index. Now, the RBI taking a cue from the US Federal Reserve is seeking to combine this structured data with public sentiment. This is also going to make the central bank very powerful as it will be able to understand the sentiments of the people on a real-time basis.

RBI wanted the new CIMS to be a state of the art and an end to end solution which will use both Data Warehouse and Data Lake technology. It will take care of seamless data collection and validations, staging area portal, meta-data repository and will include an integrated centralized analytics platform for creating RBI's Data Sciences Lab.

Among a huge list of vendors, the RBI shortlisted five major IT firms for the implementation of a CIMS for seamless data collection and validations. The five firms were selected based on the EOI notified by the RBI in July 2018 for identifying a solution provider for implementation of a CIMS by overhauling the RBI's current Data Warehouse.

In June 2019, a vendor was selected to implement Reserve Bank's CIMS for seamless data collection and validations at a budget of Rs 310.52 crores. The project will need to be completed within a year of commencement of the contract with the RBI.

The new CIMS is expected to have the following features –

• All the facilities and data from the current data warehouse system will be available in the new CIMS with a re-engineered and re-coded business processes developed using the new technology and architecture
• The new CIMS has to establish a system-to-system interface for an automated element-based data collection from about 130 banks or entities
• In consultation with stakeholders, a complete metadata index should be developed to help with searches for CIMS data elements and facilities
• The new CIMS homepage will be user-friendly, dynamic and responsive
• Centralized data visualization and analytic tools should be available
• All historical data will be stored with the time dimensions to enable the data to be used directly for any time series analysis
• The CIMS solution will have a strong and powerful built in security features. Only the best in class safeguards will be developed, implemented, maintained to prevent misuse of information systems and protect them
• There will be an adequate testing platform for all CIMS functionalities like test loading for system stress capacity
• Three separate portals will be incorporated in the CIMS – an Indian Financial Network (INFINET) based portal for confidential data to be accessed by the RBI and commercial banks/ entities with access to INFINET, an internet-based portal for the general public, and a separate internet-based portal for centralized analytics which will be accessible to authorized users
• The new CIMS will have an integrated Centralized Analytics System (CAS) capable of carrying out all advance Statistical and Econometrics analysis of the data
• The new CIMS is expected to have a proper user management module with one user administrator having the sole authority of managing the CIMS users