Central Banks Thrust On Rural Branch Networking

The Central Bank of India proposes to computerise and connect as many of its 1,453 rural branches as possible in the coming fiscal.

"Our thrust will be to computerise the rural branches, having computerised about 1,000 metro and urban branches," the bank's chairman & managing director Dalbir Singh said.

"There is a lot of scope in the rural areas as just 5 per cent of savings there come into banks. There is a huge potential for growth there," said the bank's general manager in-charge of information technology, K Raghuraman.

The bank intends to introduce its products in the rural markets considering its huge surplus of funds, which it is unable to deploy in the urban and metro areas, he added.

In the current fiscal, the bank has demarcated a sum of Rs 90 crore towards investment in information technology, said Raghuraman.

This includes branch automation and connectivity, among others. The plan is to connect the branches using the cluster approach in the rural areas.

Meanwhile, the bank launched its debit card on Thursday, whereby its customers will be able to withdraw cash globally across the six lakh outlets of MasterCard Maestro network.

"Central Bank has become the first public sector bank to have introduced an online PIN-based debit programme," said MasterCard International vice-president and country manager Sameer Vakil. This will help make the entire transaction seamless, he added.

The bank will initially target its savings customers and then move onto offering the product to current account holders.