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IndusInd Bank has seen a rise in customer acquisition through improving its ATM offerings. By giving the option of drawing currency in the denomination of their choice, as well as allowing them to draw cash without using cards, the bank has seen a rise in even customers of other banks coming into its ATMs, said Managing Director and CEO Romesh Sobti.
“Last month, 17 lakh users used our ATMs and 75 per cent of those were non-customers… our services are attracting them to us,” Sobti said. “Typically 5-7 per cent of these customers move with us…I am interested in the savings bank account and not the Rs 15 that I get through inter-charge for using another bank’s ATM,” he said.
IndusInd bank currently has about 852 ATMs across 320 locations in the country. The private sector lender is the only bank to offer choice money in their ATM services - which provide the option to choose the denominations from Rs 100, 500 and Rs 1,000. Sobti said that this offering was based on customer research and monitoring behavioural patterns of the customers on how much each area’s ATM usage is and the hit rate.
This is the extra investment for customer convenience which we are willing to do, Sobti said.
CARDLESS WITHDRAWAL
The bank also offers customers the facility to withdraw without the ATM card through its cash-on-mobile service. The cardless cash facility requires the customer to register for the service at any IndusInd branch or ATM via the bank’s Internet banking facility.
While withdrawing, the customer can call the customer service centre to generate a pin number on their mobile phone which will help them withdraw cash without the card.
However, this requires the bank to make provisions for more cassette capacity at the ATMs which is an “additional expense”.
Asked if the ATM channel had broken even, Sobti said,
“An ATM typically costs Rs 3.5 lakh…and with rentals, the capital expenditure to about Rs 4.5-5 lakh. So, if an average usage is between 100 and 150 for an ATM across the network, then you break even over time.”
> vageesh.nagarajan@thehindu.co.in
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