Bandhan Bank on Tuesday unveiled two new products -- Visa international debit card and non-residential accounts -- pointing towards the bank’s strategy to look beyond the rural finance for deposit mobilisation.
In the retail financing space, too, Bandhan is looking to diversify beyond microcredit as it is in talks with car aggregator company Ola for financing car loans for drivers attached with company.
“We are in talks with Ola for financing car loans.
"We can also provide value-added services like providing a list of our creditworthy borrowers for availing car loans for working with Ola.
"We also plan to talk to Uber for car financing,” said C S Ghosh, chairman and managing director, Bandhan Bank.
So far, 99 per cent of the bank’s lending of Rs 13,500 crore (Rs 135 billion) has been to microborrowers.
However, on the liability side, it is aggressive in garnering deposits, which so far stands at Rs 7,500 crore (Rs 75 billion).
Of this, around 50 per cent of its deposit has been from new customers.
Bandhan expects to have a loan portfolio of Rs 14,500 crore (Rs 145 billion) and a customer base of 10 million by the end of this financial year.
“On the asset side, we are gradually increasing our lending to small and medium enterprises, housing and loan against property segments.
"On the liability side, there has been a huge demand from high net worth individuals to send remittances to India. Thus, we felt the need to focus on NRI customers,” said Ghosh.
Image: C S Ghosh, chairman and managing director, Bandhan Bank. Photograph: Rediff Archives
