Mobile banking vans to speed up financial inclusion: BoB

Under the financial inclusion plan, Bank of Baroda (BOB) has decided to harness the mobile banking van (MBV) route to provide banking services in remote areas of the country.

In the next one year, BOB plans to launch 25 new MBV units all over the country.

The model has already been successfully tested by the bank in Gujarat and Bihar, while two such units were today launched in Uttar Pradesh by BOB Chairman and Managing Director M D Mallya.

These two units would serve Allahabad and Varanasi districts at least twice every week.

“These MBV units have Core Banking Solutions (CBS) connectivity to provide all banking services, including deposit and withdrawal of money,” Mallya told media here.

Besides, the bank has prepared an Information-Communication-Technology (ICT) based roadmap for providing banking services to all villages with population above 2,000 falling under the lead district programme by March 2012.

Of total 2,900 villages pan India under BOB’s purview, 893 are located in Uttar Pradesh alone. “In fact, we are ahead of the schedule and have already covered 407 villages in the state,” Mallya informed.

He was in town to chair the UP State Level Bankers’ Committee (SLBC) meeting to review the progress of financial inclusion programme as mandated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). BOB is the Uttar Pradesh convenor of SLBC and has 17 lead districts here, including two in Uttarakhand.

BOB has 653 branches and 270 ATMs in the state. The bank is planning to open 60 more branches and 62 ATMs in the state, he added. “We have a total business worth of Rs 40,000 crore in Uttar Pradesh, including deposits of over Rs 27,800 crore,” he said.

“We see a lot of opportunity in the small and medium enterprises, agriculture and priority sector lending spaces in Uttar Pradesh, which continues to be an important growth area for us,” Mallya said.