Our Banking & eFE Bureaus

Mumbai, June 11: Standard Chartered Bank (StanChart) has tied up with Rediff.com India Ltd to provide online and offline banking and related services to Indian customers.

Services include information on deposits, loans and mortgages, credit cards, mutual funds and insurance products of the bank. Users will be able to directly interact with the bank and request for products online at http;//standardchartered.rediff.com

StanChart has 2.4 million customers at present with an average of 1.2-1.3 products per person. The bank hopes to increase this average to three per person in the next year or two. Rediff.com has a user base which is growing at around eight per cent per month. StanChart is hoping to capitalise on rediff.com’s base and sell its products to them.

While the exact revenue sharing is not known, there will be a fixed and a variable component. Rediff.com will receive a fee for each individual application that StanChart receives.

The time frame and target were not disclosed but the bank wants to increase its customer base as much as possible using Rediff.com’s customer base.

Said StanChart’s general manager and chief executive (India), Harpal Duggal: “Our tie-up is in line with out Internet banking initiative which we shall be launching soon. We feel that this tie-up will benefit customers who want to bank with us but are located in places where we have no branches.

This is an option which will help them. The tie-up with Rediff.com will allow us to make information on all our retail banking services more accessible to a large number of customers across the country. It also fulfills our objective of making banking simpler.”

“We find that it is the younger group that is coming online now more than ever and online facilities like these will provide convenience in keeping with the demands posed by their lifestyles,” said Rediff.com’s chairman and CEO, Ajit Balakrishnan.

In addition to the current tie-up, Rediff.com will look to having more tie-ups in future with online and offline financial service companies in the fields of personal finance, insurance, mortgages, equity broking and mutual funds.