Financial Inclusion Initiatives

Bank did a full production rollout of its Rural FI Initiative in the catchment area of Dindori Bank Branch at Nashik District on July 2, 2010. This initiative has been launched in association with Rural Credit Cooperative Societies who have existing relationship with our Bank. Seven such Credit Cooperative Societies are acting as BCs for this initiative across nine touchpoints. The initiative will benefit the farmers and tribal population in the four village blocks - Surgana, Satana, Kalwan and Deola comprising 29 villages. To begin with, No Frills Savings Bank accounts and Savings Bank Krishi Account are being offered. The technology platform is enabled to offer one recurring deposit and one loan account and development for a remittance product offering is currently on. Dindori branch will be the nodal branch for this FI initiative. The Credit Cooperative Societies have been equipped with POS machines on which customers can carry out cash deposit and withdrawal transactions through swipe of a debit card.

Bank did a full production rollout of its Urban FI Initiative in Bangalore with possibility of future scalability in the other Urban Centers of the country. Janalakshmi a well known name in Microfinance has been appointed as the Business Correspondent to cater to the unbanked and under banked population in the urban areas through its fields executives acting as mobile Customer Service Points (CSPs). The POS model has been used wherein the CSPs are equipped with POS machines on which customers can carry out cash deposit and withdrawal transactions through swipe of a debit card.

Bank extended its Financial Inclusion initiatives in the SLBC mandated villages employing the POS model with debit cards issued in a Closed User Group.

Launch of a remittance led FI initiative in the Dharavi - U.P. remittance corridor with IDEA Cellular. This is a mobile based branchless banking initiative where the mobile platform is being used to facilitate basic banking and remittance transactions and IDEA's retail outlets are being used as CSPs. The retail outlets of IDEA act as transaction points for the customers, where he deposits cash with the retailer and the transfers the remittance amount into the No Frills Savings account of the recipient through a mobile phone. The transaction is authenticated through an M-PIN number provided to the customer.

• Providing a 2nd Operative savings account to EBT beneficiaries as well as other FI products and services as per their needs
• Executing SLBC mandates in the balance villages
• Commercial launch of the FI initiative with IDEA
• Launching FI initiatives within a 30 Km radius of the Rural Branches