Kotak Mahindra Bank plans for aggressive expansion

Tiruchirapalli, May 16 (UNI) Kotak Mahindra Bank Limited, a leading private sector bank was planning for an aggressive expansion in the current fiscal.

Talking to newspersons here today, K V S Manian, Group Head, Retail Liabilities and Branch Banking, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Mumbai, said as part of their expansion programme, the bank planned to reach the 200th branch mark by middle of next year in 95 locations across the country. The bank would have 105 branches spread across 73 locations this year, he added.

Mr Manian said as of now, the customer base of the bank was around three lakh, out of which traditional banking services rendering household segment amounted to 2.5 lakh and the balance of 50,000 comprising small business banking, tagged with technology-enabled services.

By this year, the target was to reach six-lakh customer base, out of which 1.2 lakh would be catered to small business banking category, he added.

On overseas expansion, he said the bank has no plans to open branches in foreign countries, except in Dubai, where the formal approval from the Dubai government was yet to come.

He said the bank had sold gold coins worth about 200 Kgs, since its launch in October, 2006 and in the current fiscal the target was to exceed 600 Kgs. Twenty-five percent of the total gold sales came from the branches in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, he added.

On ATMs, Kotak Mahindra, would share the services with HDFC bank and acceptance of all VISA cards free of cost and the bank was maintaining only a small number of (38) off-site ATMs across the country and this will be enhanced to 150 before March, 2008, he said.

He said on new products and services, the bank would formally launch the distribution of General Insurance Policies within the next two to three weeks for which a tie-up has already been made with TATA AIG. Another product in the offing was to embark upon credit card business for which the details were being worked out, he added.

Earlier, Mr Manian launched the bank's first branch in Tiruchirapalli city and its tenth branch in Tamil Nadu.

UNI