Branchless banking - reaching out to remote villages

"If I want to visit the nearest branch, I will have to spend a major portion of may day's earning as bus charge to and fro (nearly Rs.10-12). With that, half of my day's productivity will come down," says Zulaikha, who also nurses her ailing mother at home. For Zulaikha, fellow village Shobha is the banker. Shobha, a member of the local self-help group, is the Business Correspondent of Corporation Bank in Surinje village of Dakshina Kannada district. Her home serves as the extension counter of Tadambail branch, situated 8 km away from the village, providing basic banking facilities to the villagers. Zulaikha wanted to deposit a portion of her savings with the bank at Shobha's house. After enquiring about the health of her mother, Shobha asked Zulaikha for her smart card, to be inserted in the small device kept at her house. Unlike in the sophisticated systems, where one has to produce a PIN (personal identification number) and passwords, the customer is asked to place her left thumb at the place marked on the device. Voice guidance from the device confirms the authentication of the transaction to both the customer and the banking correspondent. This system is now proving to be a role model on how banking facilities can be taken to more un-banked areas in the country.

BoB hires US consultancy to groom talent

Bank of Baroda (BoB) has appointed US-based consultancy firm, Wright Management Grow, to groom 300 employees in the scale-4 and above segments, as future senior managers. “The level of loyalty and commitment is very high among this bunch, in spite of the poor compensation package, so we decided that it is necessary to provide them with good development program along with an attractive incentive from the total profit,” said A K Khandelwal, chairman and managing director. The bank has devised several training programs to train recruits at various levels. The bank has been imparting specialised training for 500 young people in new segments such as mutual funds, wealth management and others. At the same time, the bank is also training 100 people for frontline sales and customer services.

Recovery ratings of NPAs soon

Distressed or non-performing assets can now have a better market with the credit rating agencies offering to rate such assets. The rating agency will assign the rating on the basis of the possibility and extent of recovery from a defaulted or non-performing asset through its recovery rating mechanism. Mr Krishnan Sitaraman, Head - Fund Services & Fixed Income, Research, CRISIL, felt that the key benefit of the recovery rating was basically an independent third-party evaluation of the recovery prospects in defaulted assets or NPAs based on which the banks or asset re-construction companies could arrive at a valuation to their investments backed by such assets.

Vijaya Bank biz volume rises to Rs 66,000 cr

"With a lift in the volume of business of more than Rs 22,000 crore since March 2006, our bank has moved from a small bank to a mid-sized bank in the country. Within a year and four months, the business volume which stood at Rs 44,471 crore in March 2006 has risen to around Rs 66,000 crore at present. Our aim is to register a business volume of Rs 1 lakh crore by 2010 with focus on SMEs, retail business and infrastructure,” Mr T. Valliappan, Executive Director, Vijaya Bank, said.