Tuesday, September 04, 2012

BANKS ON THE MOVE : IDBI BANK

Better late than later, IDBI Bank has finally understood the power of numbers – or rather, of Indian masses. With their renewed focus towards retail banking, the bank seems to be re-mastering age-old strategies… and quite efficiently. B&E does a snapshot insider of what’s up! by Mona Mehta

The tactical move to install point of sale (or PoS, in industry terminology) machines deserves a deeper mention. The bank intends to allow IDBI Debit Card customers a withdrawal of up to `1,000 through these PoS machines kept with small shopkeepers. Thus, with a target to install 100,000 new PoS machines over the next 3 years, the bank is aiming to get hold of the mass by facilitating higher financial inclusion. The fact is that this move is perchance the biggest ever strategic ground level move in the Indian banking industry undertaken by any bank ever to ensure direct retail consumer interaction – after the credit card inclusion program undertaken by banks, of course. Considering India as a whole, a figure of 100,000 is quite a small and insignificant figure to make a huge change. But multiply that by ten, and one starts seeing how IDBI Bank has the wherewithal to become the largest retail bank in India, and purely through ground level marketing.

As mentioned before, the parallel corollary is the bank’s intent to increase branches. And this long term strategy is not necessarily to provide ease of use to consumers (for that, the PoS and ATMs are enough), but more to reduce the cost of its lending. At present, for lending, the bank is more dependent on borrowings. Even this year, the bank is setting up around 250 new branches to increase its tally to 1,000 branches.

And Some Caution Too!
Still, it would make sense for the bank to be cautious on a few areas, where it seems (on the face of it) that logic and empirical evidence are not matching – the bank is busy in expanding itself by adopting the inorganic route – for example, the bank at present is in the process of merging IDBI Housing Finance with itself. The hope, as top management of IDBI Bank revealed to B&E, is that synergies would ensure that duplication of operations is reduced (for example, in home loans itself) and operational efficiencies are realised optimally. While most such mergers have known to fail in the industry, what might work to IDBI Bank’s benefit was that the housing finance wing was originally an offshoot of IDBI Bank itself – therefore, the danger of culture collisions is immediately reduced. While the logic for the housing wing is synergy, the bank – almost going against this same logic –has floated a wholly-owned subsidiary, IDBI Asset Management Ltd, to undertake mutual fund business. This is apart from the bank’s insurance business in partnership with Fortis (which creditably is doing wonders; see chart). Across divisions, therefore, there still exists differences of opinions on strategic imperatives and intent.

At another end, the bank has also begun its overseas operations by opening its first foreign branch at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC). While the hope is that this might have a promising future in helping the bank to provide a range of corporate banking services (including the extension of commercial borrowings, foreign currency loan syndication and trade finance), the fact is that not only is Dubai the biggest recession hit area of the Gulf region, such international expansions take away considerable capital, manpower and other resources from the bank’s core focus.


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