Indian Bank has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), to act as registrar for ‘Aadhaar’ project. The MoU was signed in the presence of CMD T M Bhasin and Chairman of UIDAI Nandan Nilekani.
Indian Bank is the seventh bank to enter into such an MoU by which it shall provide Aadhaar (UID No) to its existing customers as well as future customers by collecting biometric and demographic details as per UID norms.
According to the bank’s release, provision will be made to use real-time online authentication of identities to be provided by the UIDAI for satisfying KYC norms required for opening of the ‘no frills’ SB accounts and further factoring the same for making payments in various government schemes.
Indian Bank has a network of banking outlets with over 1,760 branches and 1,014 ATMs. The bank reached the Rs159,027 crore mark as on June 30, 2010, registering a growth of 23.56 per cent. The bank has a deposit base of Rs91,000 crore and a credit portfolio of Rs68, 027 crores.
The bank has completed the National Pilot Project on Financial Inclusion in Puducherry and has opened 144,000 ‘no frill’ accounts involving all banks. It is the first state / UT in the country where all the families were provided with a bank account.
Besides Puducherry, Cuddalore and Kollam districts, the bank has completed 100 per cent financial inclusion with regards to opening accounts in the remaining 11 lead districts of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.
As per the Financial Inclusion Plan 2010-13, the bank will cover 5,563 villages in 35 UT / states and cover over 1.2 million households by opening around 1.8 million ‘no frill’ accounts with OD facility. With this, the bank will cover around 8.8 million people.
“It will help the UID develop the architecture of technical standards and ecosystem to facilitate collection of demographic and biometric attributes,” according to the bank’s release.
