Tamilnad Mercantile Bank Achieves Major Efficiency Gains Through AI

Tamilnad Mercantile Bank (TMB), one of India’s oldest private banks, is using Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications to support its mission to deliver technology-driven, efficient, and ethical banking services. With Oracle Fusion Applications for finance, HR, and customer experience, TMB has unified core operations and leveraged AI to automate processes, increase productivity, reduce costs, and improve employee and customer experience.

“As we reimagined how our bank operates and serves customers, we knew we needed a modern, agile, and intelligent foundation,” said Salee S. Nair, Managing Director and CEO, Tamilnad Mercantile Bank. “Oracle Fusion Applications helped us consolidate systems and automate key business processes, improve insights, and build an AI-powered foundation to strengthen our operations. Oracle’s embedded AI and quarterly updates, enable us to expand with efficiency and better serve our customers.”

Nair, sharing the major impact from the Oracle solutions on the bank’s financial numbers said, “The Oracle solutions have helped us grow as a bank. In Financial Year 24-25 the bank underperformed the industry however post the Oracle solution rollout, since Q2, Q3, FY26, TMB has grown higher than the industry by almost 3 percent. The cost to income ratio has also decreased over the last few quarters. The cost to income ratio has decreased to 44.40 percent in Q3FY26,” Notably the ratio was at 47 percent in FY24.

With Oracle Fusion Applications, TMB has standardized on a single integrated suite for finance, HR, and customer experience. With Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), TMB has increased productivity, reduced costs, and improved financial controls, while Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM) has enhanced the employee experience and expanded workforce insights. For example, AI agents like the Leave and Absence Policy Advisor Agent, deliver real-time, personalized guidance to TMB employees, helping them navigate company leave policies and reducing administrative burden. In addition, Oracle Fusion Cloud Customer Experience (CX) has helped TMB improve sales efficiency and enhance customer service. 

“As customer expectations continue to evolve, long-established banks must modernize how they operate while safeguarding the trust and relationships they have built over decades,” said Shailesh Singla, vice president of cloud applications, Oracle India. “With Oracle Fusion Applications, TMB is harnessing embedded AI to streamline finance, HR, sales and service to drive productivity and elevate the employee and customer experience. This is an example of how AI can empower a time-honored organization to evolve confidently for the AI era.”

TMB’s Executive Vice President (Information Technology), Davis Jose Thettayil said, “Using the Oracle solution suite, the bank has not only been able to reduce costs but also improve the collections efficiency, increase the assets and liability business. To improve collections, using advanced analytics, we now understand the kind of nudges that can be used for different customers. For example, while some customers respond better to email, for others a phone call works better. The bank is now in the process of setting up a separate AI, analytics function.”

According to FE the bank has allotted Rs 250 crore for FY26 for modernising the IT infrastructure. Nair added that the first phase of technology revamp would be completed by September. Despite developing the bank growing on the technology front, Nair said that they have hired 1,043 new recruits across all verticals, FE reported.

The implementation was managed by Oracle Partner Network members, Deloitte for finance and customer experience, and Kovaion Consulting for HR.

Founded in 1921, TMB now serves more than 5.6 million customers across India, with over 600 branches and 5,000 employees. In a fast-evolving and competitive digital banking landscape, TMB needed to move off legacy systems and onto a scalable cloud platform to accelerate automation and efficiency as it grows. After careful evaluation, TMB decided to move its finance, HR, and customer experience processes to Oracle Fusion Applications.