Andhra Bank to restructure controlling offices, empower staff

Our Bureau

Hyderabad, July 17: Andhra Bank is embarking on a restructuring of its controlling offices in an effort to facilitate faster decision-making. The move is in line with the recommendations of the National Institute of Bank Management and management consultants from the Administrative Staff Collage of India.

Accordingly, the bank has scaled down the strength of its controlling offices from 27 to 19, and has proposed to bring this number further down to 16 during the current year, said bank sources.

“The bank has reorganised its operating structure by reducing the layers of decision-making, and has empowered the staff at all levels,” said Mr B Vasanthan, Chairman and Managing Director of the bank.

The bank further plans to bring down the response time across the counter, and has initiated empowering the staff at the counter, he added.

To improve operations efficiency, the bank has decided to review the internal control systems on an on-going basis and to tune the controlling offices with the changing needs.

Internal control consists of a wide spectrum of internal inspection. Short inspection of borrowal accounts of Rs 50 lakh and above is being carried out for effective post-disbursal monitoring of the accounts, sources said. Meanwhile, the bank has initiated implementation of consultants Arthur Anderson’s recommendations on credit card business. The bank has decided to make the credit card business as a separate profit centre and has added more facilities such as electronic card, revolving credit facility, and online billing to its services. The division has reported a turnover of Rs 480.26 crore for the financial year ending March 2001.