Syndicate Bank moves to catch 'em young

Move comes a day after RBI asks banks to allow minors to open bank accounts

Within a day of the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) guidelines on opening of bank accounts by minors aged 10 and above, Manipal-based Syndicate Bank today said that it would soon come out with a product for minors.

“We have already started working on designing a new product for minors. This new guideline from the RBI will help us in achieving our goal of increasing our CASA levels which has dipped to 29.90 per cent in FY14. We will launch the product very soon,” said Sudhir Kumar Jain, Chairman and Managing Director.

The RBI on Tuesday asked banks to allow minors above 10 years to independently open and operate savings bank accounts. As of now, banks allow minors to operate accounts only with a parent or a guardian. The RBI also allowed banks to offer facilities like Internet banking, ATM / debit cards, and cheque book to minors.

Syndicate Bank’s current account savings account (CASA) level stands at 29.90 per cent and it is aiming at increasing it to 31.5 per cent during the year 2014-15. “We are in the process of launching a special CASA campaign later this year to take up our CASA percentage. We will also open around 350 new branches during this year,” Jain said.

The bank’s domestic CASA deposits increased from Rs 51,926 crore as at fourth quarter-ended March 2013 to Rs 55,911 crore as of March, 2014, a growth of 7.67 per cent year-on-year. Savings bank deposits have gone up by 11 per cent from Rs 38,017 crore as on March 31, 2013 to Rs 42,030 crore as on March 31, 2014.

Jain said, the bank has formed special marketing teams in 15 centres across the country. These teams will move into the market and tap the public sector salary accounts as part of the CASA campaign. “Because of the election model code of conduct, we could not get some of the government accounts coming into our bank. We will push for these funds aggressively once the election process ends,” the chairman added.