Indian Bank, a government-owned bank, has big plans to expand its business correspondent (BC) outlets across the country. Currently, they have 10,750 BC outlets, but they aim to almost double that number to 20,000 within the next two years. Sujay Kumar, the bank’s project head for selecting corporate business correspondents, shared this information with Financial Express.
To achieve this expansion, Indian Bank will expose an application programming interface (API) that will allow many companies to come on board and route their financial services products through BC points. One of their partners, Manipal Technologies, has already been allocated over 630 BC points, and this number will continue to increase based on demand.
This strategy aligns with other public sector banks (PSBs) that are aggressively expanding their presence in semi-urban and rural areas through BCs. For example, Punjab National Bank doubled its BC outlet network from 12,831 in December 2021 to 22,607 in December 2022. Bank of Baroda (BoB) also significantly increased its BC count from 29,000 to around 52,000 within just one year. Canara Bank, which had 8,906 outlets in March 2022, has expanded its network to nearly 14,000 outlets.
Indian Bank’s renewed focus on expanding its BC network is driven by the increasing number of people in remote areas who prefer doorstep banking rather than traveling long distances to reach a bank branch. Kumar emphasized that with the rise of digitalization, traditional brick-and-mortar banking alone can no longer meet customer expectations.
Rajalakshmi Raghu, the head of strategic relationships at Manipal Technologies, revealed that the company has a widespread network of over 7,500 trained BCs across the country. Out of these, more than 630 outlets will be utilized to extend Indian Bank’s products and services.
These BC outlets offer a range of services, including enrolling customers and opening savings accounts and basic bank accounts. They also facilitate government schemes like PM Jan Dhan Yojana and provide various deposit products such as fixed deposits and recurring deposits.
Furthermore, the BC outlets are trained to offer loans and assist customers in obtaining kisan credit cards, agricultural loans, gold loans, and housing loans. They also provide transaction services like Aadhaar-Enabled Payments System, card-based deposits and withdrawals, fund transfers through IMPS, mobile and Aadhaar seeding, balance inquiries, mini statements, and passbook printing.
Moving forward, BCs will have the opportunity to cross-sell additional products to customers. Kumar mentioned that health and bike insurance, as well as mutual funds, are among the products that BCs can offer alongside their existing services.