AU Small Finance Bank joins hands with Sahaj e-Village

AU Small Finance Bank has announced signing an MoU with Sahaj e-Village for extending its banking service in remote areas through Business Correspondent Agent (BC) model.

With this MoU, AU Bank will be able to further foster its mission of financial inclusion and greater customer outreach. Started in 1996, as AU Financiers, today AU Small Finance Bank has a track record of over twenty years of serving the underbanked and unbanked.

As per the agreement that was signed at the Jaipur headquarter of AU Bank, the BCs will act as an intermediary between the Bank and the customers in the interior locations where the Bank does not have a presence. The Sahaj Agents will gather information, counsel and provide customized products and services to these customers.

"Making banking easier, simple and accessible is our key mission component. With this BC model tie up with Sahaj, AU Bank will be able to significantly expand its outreach to the hinterlands of India. With this MoU, we will be able to provide banking at 90+ new locations that did not have banking access hitherto and expand our customer outreach to over 500+ locations by March 2018," said MD and CEO, AU Small Finance Bank, Sanjay Agarwal.

"We are delighted to associate with AU Bank for offering banking to the bottom of the pyramid. Sahaj has been working across 70,000 touch points in multiple gram panchayats for last ten years," said Group CEO Sahaj e-Village Ltd., Sanjay Nandrajog.

"We bring assortment of financial inclusion, social inclusion and digital inclusion services to rural areas through village level entrepreneurs. This association is very synergic as AU Bank has a history of providing financial services to this strata as an NBFC, Au Financiers," added Sanjay.

Sahaj e-Village Limited is a venture initiative of SREI Infrastructure Finance Limited (SIFL) that has been bridging the digital divide between urban and rural India under the flagship of NeGP of the Government of India.

With the objective of ensuring enhanced financial inclusion and achieving greater outreach of the banking sector, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had permitted the banks to use the services of Business Correspondents (BC).