Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Friday, Oct 21, 2005
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Friday, Oct 21, 2005 |
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Money & Banking
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Public Sector Banks Marketing - Strategy Indian Bank eyes insurance broking M. Somasekhar
Hyderabad , Oct. 20 INDIAN Bank has set in motion a series of initiatives to optimise its manpower and infrastructure resources and simplify banking procedures to the best advantage of the customer. The bank also plans to foray into insurance broking, to transit from a company agent to a customer agent profile, according to its Executive Director, Mr B. Sambamurthy. The bank now sells insurance products. Its board recently gave `in principle' nod for the foray and "we intend to approach the Insurance Regulatory Development Authority (IRDA), for the required clearance," Mr Sambamurthy told Business Line in an interview here. "We see tremendous potential in the insurance sector for us and plan to do a pilot soon," said the Executive Director, who was in Hyderabad to inaugurate Automated Teller Machine (ATMs) and core banking solutions at select branches. Explaining the new initiatives, Mr Sambamurthy said the bank has put in place a Centralised Appraisal System (CAS) in Chennai. A whole lot of banking services/products are centralised, while the delivery is decentralised. Which means, a customer could hand over his proposal at the nearest branch. It would be processed at a central processing unit (linked to 105 branches), which has people with various skill-sets to evaluate it. Finally, the result would be delivered back at the branch, all in just from a few hours to a couple of days. Indian Bank has engaged Wipro to implement Six Sigma for best practices. In the last nine weeks, more than 5,000 applications were processed and it was working well, Mr Sambamurthy said. "We want to extend this to corporate banking as well". Encouraged by the responses, the bank wants to strengthen it in Mumbai and Delhi and extend it to State capitals such as Bangalore and Hyderabad soon. To optimally use the manpower, the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, has been mandated to detail a human resource management (HRM) strategy. The report would be ready by the end of 2005. It would focus on studying the HR strengths and weaknesses and also devise responses to challenges in the banking sector. Similarly, the bank has sent 100 employees to the Indian School of Business (ISB), here for executive development programmes in two batches. Wipro is also doing a restructure exercise. ICRA has been entrusted to do an enterprise-wide risk management, the ED said. Indian Bank is essentially concentrating on re-looking and optimising the three Ps— people, process and products to face competition in the banking sector and exploit the emerging opportunities, Mr Sambamurthy said.
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