Difference between core banking and retail banking?

Answer 1

Often retail banking is referred to as "non commercial banking" this would be your common checking accounts and consumer loans. Where as "core banking" is often the very solid business accounts and commercial loans. It is referred to, as 'core' because it is a core or central to the banks business. Few banks survive from just retail banking services, they need those core business accounts that are perhaps more stable than retail business. The exact term usage may also be based on the part of the country you live in as is often the case with our language.

To some extent, the difference is (but not exact):

A core banking is a centralized system and every data has been kept at the server side. So, 1- a costumer can open an account and use it in every branch, 2-whenever the connection between a branch and the core is dismissed, that branch is out of work till the connection be repaired.

In a retail banking, every branch has its own portion of accounts and the changes will be synchronized with the center at a certain time (e.g. at the end of that day). So, 1-a costumer can work on his/her account just as the origin branch that he/she registered, 2-in case of disconnecting, that branch still can provide services to its own accounts.

The retail banking systems (RBS) are a subset of core banking systems (CBS). In other words, when you purchase a core banking systems a retail banking systems CAN be a part of it. Additionally, in CBS, you could have whole sale banking, corporate banking, Private banking, business banking and so on. To sum up, a core banking will deal with the core of all required systems that are required by banks. These could include the followings:

1. Transaction processing system
2. signature
3. security
4. access level
5. DR
6. Back up and recovery policy
7. ....

Therefore, as you can observe a CBS must have a general capabilities in order a RBS could be able to work.