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Indian Bank optimising manpower strength to tap retail space
Coimbatore: The Indian Bank is revamping its organisational structure to tap the retail banking space. With the retail banking business of the bank growing at 25-30 per cent year-on-year, the bank foresees enormous untapped potential for growth in this area.

The bank has mandated Wipro for the six sigma process.

The bank's executive director, B. Sambamurthy said the bank has created a structural `central processing unit' to take care of credit approval. The unit is up and working in Chennai.

The bank has extended the three `P' (people, product and process) concept in Mumbai and Delhi and is planning to introduce this in Hyderabad and Bangalore soon. He said the structural change had helped the bank in sanctioning 6,000 retail banking proposals amounting to Rs20 crore in just eight weeks.

The bank has roped in IIM, Ahmedabad for doing the Human Resource Management study. The bank would also focus on the three `T' - transaction, transformation and translation - issues on the HR front.

The bank has brought down its NPAs to 1.06 per cent and was aiming to reduce it even further.
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BoB gets Sebi approval for public offer
New Delhi: Bank of Baroda has received Sebi's approval to tap the capital markets by January end to fund its domestic and overseas expansion plans.

BoB can raise over Rs1,600 crore through the follow-on public offer.

The proposed public issue would dilute government holding in the bank to 53 per cent from the present 66 per cent. The BoB issue is slated to be priced through the book building route. The bank will not return equity to government as it was done by Punjab National Bank last fiscal.

BoB is raising more capital to fund its expansion both at home and abroad, apart from meeting the stringent Basel-II norms from 2007.

The bank is embarking on a rapid expansion abroad with the target of attaining 25 per cent of its business global operations in the years to come. It plans to open more branches in US, UK, UAE, Singapore, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Male, Bangladesh and West Indies. In Malaysia, BoB is planning a 40:30:30 joint venture with the Oriental Bank of Commerce and the Bank of Maharashtra.

BoB is also planning to add 500 more ATMs this fiscal.
At present, BoB's SME credit portfolio is of the order of Rs5,272 crore, and is growing by 20 per cent per annum.
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Hewitt Associates wants role in new pension system
New Delhi: Hewitt Associates, a global leader in pension administration and human resources consulting, has evinced interest in taking up the role of a central record keeping authority in India. Other entities in the area are National Securities Depository Ltd, Central Depository Services Ltd and UTI Investor Services Ltd.

The chairman, Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), D. Swarup, has said that initially the PFRDA wants to have only one central record-keeping authority (CRA).

Besides keeping record of all pension contribution in the system, the central record keeping authority's responsibilities will include reconciliation of all instructions and information received from the points of presence. The Points of presence (PoP), which will collect pension subscriptions, will be the first points of interaction of subscribers in the new pension system.

Pension reforms are expected to roll out after Parliament gives its nod of approval to the PFRDA Bill. The Bill is to be taken up during the forthcoming winter session of Parliament. There is widespread expectation that the Bill will sail through after the Standing Committee on Finance, which had scrutinised the earlier Bill, gives its go-ahead, after the amendments it has suggested are incorporated.
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