Union Bank to sell products through post offices

Kochi, May 27: Union Bank of India (UBI) is mulling the idea of marketting its products through the Post Offices and other agencies to extend the rural reach, its chairman and managing director M V Nair disclosed here today.

Inaugurating a national conference on 'Business environment and success strategies', Mr Nair said the bank had 800 branches, out of the total 2082, in the rural areas at present but each branch was catering to 20 villages on an average.

Dwelling on the bank's plans in the changed scenario forced by globalisation, he said the number of village knowledge centres, aimed at disseminating information on crops, weather and other necessary inputs to farmers, would be increased to 201 by the year end from 101 now.

Days ahead will be turbulent and interesting for the banking industry. Only those who adapt to the change will survive,'' he said.

The bank would concentrate on corporate loans, retailing, agriculture and small and medium enterprises as part of the four-fold strategy to meet the challenges raked up by liberalisation, globalisation and leaps in information technology.

On the corporate sphere, the Bank was planning to convert 50 branches into specialised ones, appoint specialised officers and relationship managers to boost loans to the sector.

Holding that the bank always gave due importance to retailers, he said the recently-introduced retail lending marts' would be increased from 32 to 100 in the current year. The Bank also had identified 50 SME clusters for financing this year, he said.

The conference was held by Holy Gace Academy of Management Studies, Mala near Thrissur.

Globalisation has impacted rural sectors and changed the manner in which banks are approaching the segment. Rural areas are becoming an increasingly attractive markets due to the improvement in infrastructure and linkages,'' Mr Nair said.

Analysing the impact of globalisation and liberalisation, he said the opening-up of the sector ushered in a new generation of pranctices, systems, methods, tools and banks themselves.

The banks faced challenges in the areas of retail renaissance, servicing of new markets, outsourcing and corporate governance, he said while listing the changes to come in the sector further.

The chairman said the present balance sheet would turn into off balance sheet intermediation' and stress would go to capital efficiency from capital adequacy.

In future, the banks would become investors as stakeholders in other organisations instead of remaining as just savers, accepting deposits. The physical distribution would go virtual and data would turn information and knowledge too, he said.

UNI