IDFC Bank goes live with 23 branches

The bank has started operations in corporate and wholesale banking, rural banking and treasury verticals as part of the launch

IDFC Bank on Thursday went live with a "soft launch" at 23 locations, including 15 branches in rural Madhya Pradesh, becoming the 91st scheduled commercial bank in the country.

The bank, which is aiming to stress on technology, has started operations in corporate and wholesale banking, rural banking and treasury verticals as part of the launch.

The bank management had last week announced that its personal banking business, where it will compete with entrenched lenders for a share of low-cost deposits and retail advances in the cities, would formally start from January next year. To start with, the Mumbai-headquartered bank, which has its genesis as an infra lender, has 1,200 employees across all its verticals. It was selected along with micro-lender Bandhan in the last round of award of licences. Bandhan started operations in August with a network of over 500 branches.

IDFC's branches are located in Indore, Hoshangabad, Harda and Khandwa districts of Madhya Pradesh, while it has seven branches undertaking corporate and wholesale banking functions in Pune, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad, its official website said. It has a solitary personal banking branch operating out of the company headquarters in the BKC business district in central Mumbai.

According to an announcement made by its Executive Vice-Chairman and Managing Director Rajiv Lall at an event last week, it is offering savings account interest at the minimum 4 per cent prescribed by the regulator for deposits up to Rs 1 crore.

As part of its personal banking proposition, the bank is offering free transactions at any bank's ATMs, free fund transfers, free debit card for lifetime and no charges for any transactions except when cheques bounce, it said.

Last week, the bank had said the legacy wholesale and corporate banking business will be the profit centre initially, while the most number of customers will come from personal banking.