State Bank of India, the country's largest bank, in an attempt to tap a larger chunk of the mass affluent and high net worth individuals, plans to set up `one-man branches' and financial service centres in urban areas.
The bank wants to open 1,000 one-man branches in residential areas to meet the banking needs of these categories virtually at their doorstep and also establish sales outlets or FSCs at places like shopping malls and market centres.
Of SBI's 90 million retail customer base, only about 3 per cent are from the mass affluent and HNI segments.
The bank plans to open FSCs in commercial complexes, shopping malls and on city roads. These would operate as sales outfits offering personal banking products, credit cards, remittance facilities, investment advisory services, including mutual funds and insurance, to walk-in customers. The FSCs would also house an automated teller machine, a cheque drop-box and an internet kiosk.
"The outfits would act as touch-points in malls to tap the footfalls there and are primarily sales centres," said a senior SBI official. The FSCs would be manned by two SBI personnel. Customers could fill in application forms for various loan and deposit products, which would be sent to the nearest central processing centre for further follow-up.
The centres would be connected to a liabilities processing centre and a central loan processing centre.
"In metros like Mumbai, it was felt that the bank was missing out on huge HNI and upper-middle class population, which require quality banking services and hence there is an urgent need for one-man branches," said a SBI official.
"The strip branch will be run by a single person. It will pass on leads of prospective customers. There will be no cash transactions there. It will provide services virtually at the customer's door-step."
The bank is in talks with the Reserve Bank of India to secure approval for opening the outlets.
The bank also plans to convert its existing loss-making branches in metro and urban areas into lean branches providing only routine banking transactions. These branches would be staffed with a branch manager and would have a single window for all transactions.
"We plan to convert branches, which have been incurring losses into lean outlets. These branches would only accept cash and make payments," said the official.
The bank has a network of 9,559 branches and 7,546 ATMs. The bank expects the number of branches and ATMs to cross 10,000 and 8,500, respectively by March 2008-end.
