Corporation Bank opens 101 service outlets

Mangalore, Sep 1: With an aim to provide banking at the doorsteps of villagers, the public sector Corporation Bank on Monday, Sep 1 opened its 101 bank service outlets spread over 12 states including 51 Grameen Vikas Kendras (GVK), 25 branches and 25 ATMs across the country.

The Chairman and Managing Director of the Bank B Sambamurthy said at the press conference here that with the opening of 51 GVKs- Branchless Banking Outlets the number of total GVKs had risen to nearly 200 across the country. Out of which 126 are alone in Karnataka, followed by 37 in Andhra Pradesh and 20 in Goa.

The bank had branded it as +Corp Grameen Vikas Kendra+ under which scheme, the bank was taking the technology to the benefit of rural populace without going through the route of opening of regular branches. Through this scheme, the rural remote villagers now could carry out the basic banking activities like deposits and withdrawals from their own village at any time of the day at their convenience, without losing their daily wages and also save the transportation cost and time, he said.

He said that the 25 bank branches declared opened today included rural branches, Large Corporate branches, Global Cash Management outlets, Investors' Shoppe to take care of the diversified needs of the customers from rural to metro centres. With this, the total branches of the bank stood at 1025.

Replying a query, Mr Sambamurthy said that the RBI had given licenses the bank to open 150 branches across the country. Of these, the bank had already opened 44 new branches and another 15 branches would be opened during the current month. Remaining branches would be opened by the end of the current year, he said.

He said that all the newly opened branches were under Core Banking Solutions. The 25 ATMs opened today are of Biometrics technology specially designed for the illeterate farmers.

Voice guided animated screen was also provided in local language to use this ATMs, he said adding that the bank's ATMs were not only used for drawing cash but were important delivery channel for varied purpose like recharge of mobile phone, payment of LIC premium, National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) Visa Card to Card Mr Sambamurthy also said that over one million new customer have joined the bank last year and another half a million have joined in this current year itself. The bank also embarking on recruitment of over 750 staff to meet the requirements of the customers, he said.

UNI