Indian Bank plans to introduce financial kiosks in rural India

Kolkata, Dec 15(UNI) Chennai based Indian Bank, which is likely to record 17 per cent growth in business this fiscal, plans to introduce financial kiosks in rural India for the first time for the successful implementation of financial inclusion of Public sector banks.

This was announced here today by Indian Bank Chairman and Managing Director K C Chakraborty while talking to newsmen at the end of his one day visit to the city.

Referring to his plan to popularise the financial inclusion programme, Mr Chakraborty said as part of the Bank's recently launched pilot project in this regard, they were also planning to launch the concept of distributing 'multi-functional smart cards' among the country's rural folks under which a wide of banking services would be made available to them without personally visiting an Indian Bank branch.

This would be a part of the financial kiosks, to be set up in some village clusters within the next couple of months where modern gadgets like laptops would be provided to the bank representatives to enable the customers get the benefits of the bank's diversified portfolios, Mr Chakraborty announced.

Asked about the bank's financial targets till March 2007, the Indian Bank Chief refused to speak on the issue because of the SEBI guidelines since the Bank had already submitted its red herring prospects to the Board for the proposed IPO.

He said keeping in view the present trend, the Indian Bank had decided to focus on increasing lending portfolios in Agricultural, SME, Retail and Education with the maximum return coming from the Agricultural sector.

Asked about the progress of Indian Bank's decision to forming an alliance with the Oriental Bank of Commerce and the Corporation Bank with a view to sharing the business through various common routes, Mr Chakraborty said the initial formalities to this goal had already been completed and the idea was finally expected to take off soon.

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