Focus on making banking citizen-centric

The branches of Canara Bank organised first of its kind consultation meeting at the regional level where the branches had to self-review the performance, deliberate on the issues before the banking sector and come up with future strategies.

The first stage of the bottom-up consultation process, designed to generate ideas and review performance of banks and their alignment with national priorities, involving all branches under the Region’s jurisdiction was held here recently, a press release from the Canara Bank’s regional office on College road stated.

Speaking at a meeting at Canara Bank Regional Office in Madikeri recently, Canara Bank Regional Office Mangaluru Circle DGM Bala Mukunda Sharma said that banks should cater to the necessities of youth, students and women. The managers of 24 branches of the bank in Kodagu should ensure that they work with national preferences.

The youth, especially budding entrepreneurs, should be prioritised while lending loans. India has aimed to be a five trillion dollar economy by 2025. Banks have a great responsibility in this regard, he added.

Canara Bank Regional office AGM V J Aruna said that a package will be formed
by the banks, for MSME, to boost the economic development in Kodagu. These MSMEs should cater to local aspirations.

The meeting focused on the means to increase credit to various sectors of the economy, enhance use of technology to bring about innovation, enable big data analytics, and make banking citizen-centric as well as more responsive to the needs and aspirations of senior citizens, farmers, small industrialists, entrepreneurs, youth, students and women.

As a result of the consultations, several implementable and innovative suggestions came upon how public sector banks in general and the bank, in particular, may improve its performance and what the road map for the future should be.

These suggestions were collated and submitted to the zonal level for further discussions at the state level, along with comparative performance assessment of the branches under each region.

The final consultations will be held at the national level to compare both intra and inter-bank performances and to finalise the suggestions regarding the way ahead for implementation across public sector banks.

The consultative process has resulted in a renewed sense of involvement and the bank is geared towards implementing the roadmap for the future, improve its performance and align itself to national priorities.