ICICI Bank is supporting one million women through its programme for Self Help Groups which aims at empowering less-privileged women to become self-reliant.

Self Health Group (SHG) is a group of 10-20 less-privileged women primarily from rural and semi urban areas, who pool their resources on a periodic basis and use this money for income generating activities such as grocery vending and handicrafts, among others.

As a first step, the bank opens a basic savings bank deposit account with cheque book facility for every SHG and subsequently disburses loans. The interest rates on these loans are around 14 per cent and the average ticket size of the loan is around ₹1.7 lakh. Chanda Kocchar, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of ICICI Bank, said, “The initiative is to empower women and make them financially independent. Over the next year, we intend to double our reach and support over two million women with cumulative loan disbursements of ₹25,000 crore.”

In the last year and a half, ICICI Bank has provided loans to 70,000 SHGs across 164 districts of seven States. The bank runs the programme through a dedicated pool of 550 employees who look after servicing SHGs spread across Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala.

Kocchar said by March, the bank would reach out 2 million women SHGs.

Published on March 9, 2014