The union finance minister, P Chidambaram, asked the banks to focus on the technological advancement and to increase their activities in the unbanked areas of the country so as to expedite the ongoing process of financial inclusion in the country.
He expressed his concern over the fact that 10 milllion people in the country don’t have any bank accounts and do not know about the bank products.
Inaugurating the Union Bank of India’s (UBI) technology centre in Mumbai on Monday, the FM said, “We must push the frontiers of technology”. He asked the banks to begin the new service of FAQ (frequently asked questions) on their websites and keep the reply ready on the sites so that queries are solved at the click of the button.
Apart from the technology centre, UBI has opened 32 retail asset branches and 12 SME Sarals that will ensure the quick processing of loans to the SME segment of the bank, beginning from the online processing of the education loans for the students and the handing over of 5000 biometric cards to the hawkers in Mumbai. Currently, nearly 1200 branches of the bank were acting on the CBS platform and by March next year, all the 2400 branches of the bank are likely to come under it.
Similarly, the online education loan will be disbursed to the eligible students for higher studies within 48 hours of filing their applications online. Expressing his satisfaction over the performance of the public sector banks (PSB) that have recently announced their Q2 2007-08 results, the FM said, “PSBs have driven growth of the economic development of the country despite their own constraints”. On the occasion, the bank’s chairman & MD, MV Nair said that they plan to come up with a data warehouse of their own, a CRM and a call centre.