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Self-employed persons who hitherto had difficulty in getting financial assistance from banks, now have an option in DCB Bank.
The bank, according to Praveen Kutty, Head of SME and Retail Banking business, is focussed on the self-employed segment.
Speaking to BusinessLine , he said 95 per cent of the bank’s customers are self-employed and the bank does not go actively behind the salaried class.
“Self-employed persons such as traders, retailers, caterers, bakers, doctors, contractors, furniture makers, auto and scrap suppliers, tour operators, ticketing agents — the list is long — form the backbone of our country. They form the priority segment for us,” he said.
So how does the bank reach out to such people? “We organise micro-marketing events at mandis to educate/sensitise people. In fact, over the last two-and-a-half months, we have been sensitising these self-employed persons about GST (Goods and Services Tax). These events are not for selling our products, but are quasi-voluntary work.”
“We conduct skill-enhancement meetings on digitisation, financial empowerment, and so on, which help us build the bridge and get closer to the customer.”
The bank has introduced NiYO ‘smart’ card, which is being used by many self-employed persons.
“An SME or MSME customer, for instance, will not want to put all the money into his business. We do risk-profiling, besides providing risk coverage as well for them. We have the ability to underwrite customers,” Kutty said.
When asked to elaborate, he said: “Consider a seller of vada pav . He probably will have maximum number of customers between noon and, say, 3 pm. He has an account with the bank, but will probably not put all his collections into the bank. Our underwriter will do a visual check; the margin on vada pav is roughly 60 per cent. We do a lot of texture-based lending. That’s our speciality.”
The bank, he said, is growing at 26 per cent year-on-year, consequent to rapid expansion of its branch network from 2015. It has, in the last two years, expanded its network to 262 branches from 85.
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