Canara Bank, the Bangalore-based public sector lender, plans to raise a business of Rs 125 crore from financial inclusion villages across the country. The bank has till now opened 125 branches in as many gram panchayats where there is no banking facility available, a top official said.
“We have set a target to open 300 financial inclusion branches in unbanked villages. Of this, we have opened 125 branches this year. We have set a target of mobilising at least Rs 1 crore from each branch by end of March 2012. Till now, we have raised Rs 75 crore and the remaining Rs 50 crore will be raised in the remaining five months of the present fiscal,” Archana S Bhargava, Executive Director, Canara Bank, said.
She said, the bank plans to open another 175 branches to take forward the financial inclusion programme of the bank in the country during the next fiscal.
Apart from this, the bank has mobilised a deposit of Rs 125.77 crore in the no-frills accounts during the first half of the present fiscal-ended September, 2011, about 19.4 per cent of the total Canarasaral deposits (low-cost) of Rs 647.5 crore mobilised so far.
“Canara Bank is in the forefront of financial inclusion and had opened 2.78 million Canarasaral accounts as on March 31, 2011. During the first half this year, we have opened 970,000 Canarasaral accounts as against annual target of 800,000 accounts,” Bhargava told Business Standard.
She said, the bank has taken up implementation of financial inclusion plan across all the 1,617 villages allotted to the bank. The implementation is taken up through two different models, namely ‘brick and mortar model’ and business correspondent (BC) model.
Under the Brick and Mortar model, the Bank has so far opened 125 rural branches in financial inclusion villages. It has mobilised 3.75 million no-frills accounts since inception.
The average business earned per branch is Rs 58.26 lakh against the expected level of Rs 50 lakh. The average number of deposit accounts per branch is 2,015. The bank has organized Canara Rural Outreach Utsavs at various places to bring awareness and to improve its credit portfolio, she said.
Under the BC model, the bank has been allotted 1,617 villages by state level bankers’ committees of various states. The bank has appointed Integra Micro Systems (P) Ltd as technology provider along with i25 Rural Mobile Commerce Services, a sister concern of Integra for 500 villages. Bartronics India Ltd is the end-to-end service providers for the remaining 990 villages. Till now, 600 villages have been covered and another 300 would be added by March 2012, Bhargava said.
Both the service providers put together have identified customer service providers in 1,414 villages and provided training to them. It has so far 480 BCs and aims to double the number by end of March 2012. So far, the bank has issued 109,000 smart cards in these villages and it is planning to issue additional 100,000 smart cards by November 19, 2011.
The total number of transactions through smart cards has reached 4,000 as on October 31, 2011. The amount of transactions has reached Rs 25 lakh cumulatively.
