Note
: Both the sections are compulsory.
Section
I
CASE I :
BANKING ON RELATIONSHIP
The
birth of ABC Bank took place after the RBI issued guidelines for the entry of
new private sector banks in January 1993. Subsequently, the promoter of ABC
Bank sought permission to establish a commercial bank and retained KPMG, a
management consultant of international repute, to prepare the groundwork for
establishing a commercial bank. The Reserve Bank of India conveyed its approval
in principle to establish ABC Bank on February 11, 1994. Thereafter, the Bank
was incorporated under The Companies Act in September 1994. The bank started
its operations in November 1995. The ABC Bank was promoted by the tenth largest
development bank in the world, which had a magnificent record of promoting
world-class institutions in India. The promoter was a strategic investor in a
plethora of institutions, which had revolutionized the Indian financial
markets.
Keeping
in line with its policy of leveraging technology to drive its business, ABC
Bank deployed Finacle, the e-age banking solution from Infosys to consolidate
its position, meet challenges and quickly seize new business opportunities. The
entire Finacle rollout was remarkable, considering the fact that it was
implemented across all branches in a record timeframe of 5 months. Finacle
provided the critical technology platform to propel the bank’s operations with
new thrust and direction. The bank also implemented Kondor – a treasury front
office software from Reuters and ITMS – treasury back office software from
Synergy Login. The achievement of these significant milestones was consistent
with ABC Bank’s continued focus to create customer and shareholder value
through deployment of superior technology. Investments in technology were a
part of the plan to put in place building blocks for creating the right
organizational infrastructure. In future, it would help ABC Bank to
consistently deliver superior products, convenient access channels and
efficient service to its retail and corporate customers. Large investments had
been made in back-end technology to strengthen processes, systems and control.
This, in the long run, propelled by a top quality management team, clearly set
ABC Bank apart from its competitors.
ABC
Bank was a pioneer and an innovator in bringing state-of-the-art services to
its customers. It was the first private bank to enter and capture new markets.
It was the first Indian Bank to provide – ATM Next (an information portal on
ATMs); Instant Account Opening; Talking ATMs; GiftCard (Prepaid Gift Card);
EasyFill (Instant Mobile Refill Service) – along with other services. The Bank
introduced a SMS alert service, which gave the customers, updated information
on any transaction. The Bank had collaboration with other organizations
rendering related services –Insurance, National Saving Certificates and Post
office Service –providing a platform to interact with potential customers as
well as offering other services to its existing customers. It also tried to tap
potential rural market segments, which had not been explored by any other
private bank. A key achievement for the Bank was that it emerged as the highest
distributor for two top Mutual Fund Schemes consistently in the past, thereby
demonstrating the strength of the Bank’s distribution channel of TPD business.
It had registered huge success as a collecting bank to several market IPOs that
consequently leveraged the IPO financing business. It launched a strategic B2B
E-Commerce platform with BPCL to facilitate online payments from BPCL to its
dealers, thereby enhancing corporate business through new-age technology and
offering Supply Chain Financing Solutions. Corporate banking relationships were
offered at 20 locations across the country and total Banking Solutions to its corporate
customers (Annexure).
The
Value Chain Management Group also offered Supply Chain Finance Solutions to
various Corporates and special products like loan against credit card
receivables. The lifeline of ABC Bank were its people, growing at a very fast
pace. The average age of the employee at ABC Bank was 31 years. Approximately
83% of the employee strength was in the junior management category (which
included trainees and probationers), while 14% made up the middle level
management. The remaining constituted the senior and top management. The
various business units comprised of 75%, while support functions made up for
12%, and operations for the remaining 13% of the total manpower strength of the
Bank. The bank had rolled-out broad based grant of stock options covering 75%
of the employees to align their interests with those of its shareholders. The
bank had a stats-of-the-art training centre at Mumbai and every employee
received on an average 40 hours of training, annually.
ABC
Bank entered Nagpur market in two phases. In the first phase, it started with
corporate banking and established itself as the best service provider.
Afterwards, it leveraged its strengths by entering into retail banking.
Although, relatively a late entrant in the retail banking sector, it acquired
easy access in the new segment due to its brand image in corporate banking. In
retail banking, ABC Bank opted for selective penetration based on two main
factors – volume of business and credibility of the account. This enabled them
to create greater satisfaction in the customers’ mind. Initially, it started
with the criteria of an average quarterly cash balance of Rs 25,000 focusing on
premium segment. Later on, to further penetrate the market, it reduced the
average quarterly cash balance to Rs 5,000 and segmented the market on the
basis of nature of business, volume and number of transactions per month. In
this phase, by reducing the minimum available balance, it tapped other
individual customer accounts during the course of its expansion.
ABC
had always been particular about the specific needs of the customer and
maintaining consistency in the quality of products and services provided. The
bank emphasized on dealing with them on a one-to-one basis and providing
tailor-made products. In course of penetrating this segment, ABC bank achieved
great success due to its deep understanding of the needs and expectations of
local customers. On the other hand, some of the competitors who displayed grand
success in the beginning could not sustain it because of a mismatch between
expectations of the customers and delivery of services. As promotion was mainly
through word-of-mouth, the bank operated on the philosophy that 5 satisfied
customers bring 5 new customers whereas 5 dissatisfied customers break 25
existing customers. Therefore, they focused about maintaining quality of
services and customer satisfaction. The bank was very particular about reducing
the turnaround time in extending its services to the customers. It also acted
as an investment consultant for their individual customers.
Apart
from offering ‘tailor-made’ products, the bank maintained a continuous personal
relationship with each of its existing customer, based on their business
potentials. They took regular feedbacks from the customers and responded
sincerely to their suggestions or complaints. They used to call up their
premium customers once a week, asking for their views on the services offered
by the bank and suggestions to improve the same. To enable an impartial
communication system, the bank created a dedicated e-mail ID for customers’
queries and complaints, which established a direct link between them and
corporate office. The complaints and queries received from the customers were
then forwarded to the concerned branch offices for immediate redressal and
branch heads were asked to confirm the same. These complaint redressals formed
an important component in performance evaluation of the branch as well as the
concerned employee.
Even
though a large group promoted ABC Bank, its independent asset base was limited,
which posed a problem to finance large organizations. The limited asset base of
the bank created hurdles in the expansion of its business. In view of having
just two branches, RBI guidelines did not permit ABC to have its own currency
chest at Nagpur, thereby affecting smooth management of hard cash. The bank had
an insurance cover for a given amount of cash it could hold. When the cash
inflow increased over the given limit, keeping additional hard cash with the bank
increased risk. Therefore, it became necessary to transfer it to the right
place. In the city of Nagpur, ABC had only two branches, though its customer
base was very large and continuously increasing. The changing economic scenario
was expanding business opportunities for the Bank. Butibori, a place 30 kms
from Nagpur, was expected to be declared as a Special Economic Zone, which
would attract more industries and accelerate the related business activities in
the region.
An increasing number of private and
foreign banks had begun entering Nagpur. The promotional activities of these
multinational banks increased awareness about private banking amongst the
people in the region. ABC Bank also planned to expand its services in credit
cards and other value added services. With the entry of foreign and private
banks in Nagpur, the scenario was becoming more competitive and complex. As the
new players tried to grab experienced employees at higher salaries, the
employee turnover at ABC Bank increased. Looking at the changing business
scenario, the Branch Head, Nagpur, was wondering about the strategies and
measures to be taken for sustenance and growth of the bank.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1.
Analyze the case, using SWOT.
2.
Comment on the strategies used by the bank for
penetrating the Nagpur market.
3.
Suggest strategies for sustenance and
growth of the bank in view of the changing scenario of the Nagpur region.
Section II
Answer Any six :
1.
Explain buyers credit and suppliers credit
by giving examples of each type of credit. Also explain with a case study.
2.
What is correspondent banking? Explain
briefly the services offered by correspondent banking? Explain briefly the
services offered by correspondent banks to the banks having account
relationship with them? Give some examples?
3.
Explain in brief, the role of Reserve bank
of India in Indian Exchange control. Explain the role of EXIM bank in promotion
exports, and describe briefly facilities given by EXIM bank? Give examples.
4.
The organizational career is a responsibility
of the organization and the individual. Discuss.
5.
Explain the general architecture of an
integrated banking system. How is it useful? Explain with examples.
6.
What do you understand by MICR? How does it
help in clearing of instructions? Explain the field structure of MICR cheque.
7.
Explain how a digital signature is
generated? Explain its use with examples.
8.
How can Indian banks use legal recognition
of digital signature for development of business.
9.
What is market segmentation? Why is it
important to advertisers? How is it useful for banking.
No comments:
Post a Comment