Chennai, April 24 (Inditop.com) To target the youth, government-owned Indian Bank plans to open five fully automated branches this fiscal, an official said Saturday.
“The first such branch will be opened in our new corporate office (here) which will be inaugurated Aug 15. The other branches will come up soon after that in Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore,” T.M. Bhasin, the bank’s chairman and managing director, told reporters here.
Declaring the bank’s results for 2009-10, he said the e-branches will have multiple automatic teller machines for banking.
Planned as branches without human interaction, Bhasin said initially the e-branches will have a few people to guide the customers in using the machines.
The bank will open around 190 branches across the country this fiscal, taking the total to over 1,940.
Speaking about the bank’s annual results for FY10, he said the topline and the bottomline grew by 14.81 percent and 24.87 percent respectively.
“The bank posted a total income of Rs.9,030.32 crore and a net profit of Rs.1,554.99 crore last year as against Rs.7,865.77 crore and Rs.1,245.32 crore respectively during 2008-09. The bank did total business of Rs.150,000 crore (deposits Rs.88,228 crore, advances Rs.62,658 crore,” Bhasin said.
Queried about the impact on the bank after the Reserve Bank of India increased the cash reserve ratio (CRR), repo and reverse repo rates he said: “Around Rs.215 crore has been sucked out of the system towards reserves.”
Last year the bank’s gross and net non-performing assets (NPA) went up to Rs.510 crore and Rs.145 crore respectively as against Rs.459 crore and Rs.94 crore booked during 2008-09.
The bank has booked Rs.587 crore as NPA recoveries for FY10 as against Rs.457 crore earned the previous fiscal.
The NPA provision coverage ratio is around 94 percent as against the stipulated 70 percent.
“Even a recovery of Re.1 next year will add to our profits,” said an official.
Bhasin said the bank is working towards zero net NPA and 0.50 percent gross NPA by March 2012.
