The one-and-a-half year old IDBI Bank has already made good inroads with its deposit mobilisation programme which reached Rs 820 crore at the end of November last.
The expectation is that at the end of the current financial year this figure will go up by 50 per cent. Since this is high on the agenda, IDBI Bank has introduced a number of innovative systems to better reach the people who will be their potential customers.
Deepak Mukherjee, managing director, had been in the city to inaugurate the automated teller machine (ATM) at its Park Street branch. He said telebanking will soon follow with the facility to first come up at Bangalore to ultimately cover all the 12 branches that now operate in the country.
The bank has plans to cover 15 cities of which 11 cities have already IDBI branches. New branches will come up at Jaipur, Jamshedpur, Lucknow and Baroda. Thereafter, branches will be set up in non-urban areas for which certain areas in North India are looked into at present.
IDBI has been able to mobilise around 55 per cent of its total deposit mobilisation from the corporate and institutional sectors. But on the assets side, the bank is solely concentrating on the corporate sector. Retail financing is ruled out at present, said Mukherjee.
Based on a KPMG Peat Marwick survey the bank has targeted middle level corporates which have experienced an acute dearth of quality banking facility. The strategy has paid off as this segment has found a bank which has tailor-made their fund requirements.
IDBI Bank is in negotiations with various agencies to offer services to the corporate sectors by taking care of their excise duty obligations and electricity bills. However, the facility may start in north India first but for that IDBI has to go with other banks as well.
Though Mukherjee is confident that credit offtake will go up in the foreseeable future, he is reluctant to set a projected figure considering the present dull situation in the market. But credit offtake till September this year was Rs 520 crore which has gone up to Rs 670 crore at the end of November.
Mukherjee also said that IDBI Bank equity base, in which IDBI has 80 per cent stake and the balance 20 per cent held by SIDBI, will be diluted. But whether IDBI will enter the capital market sooner than later is an open question at present. It is expected that in the coming year the bank may have to enhance its capital base in order to meet the credit requirements of big among the middle level corporate entities.
