Bharatiya Mahila Bank to open branches in smaller cities, rural areas

Bharatiya Mahila Bank, country's first women's lender, today said it will start opening its branches in smaller cities and rural areas from next fiscal as it aims to have branch strength of 80 by March 2015.

"The bank has to gain its visibility and it needs to establish its brand. We want one branch in each state as we want to have pan India presence.

From April this year, we will be moving into Tier II, III and rural areas to open our branches. We want minimum of 80 branches by March 2015," bank CMD Usha Ananthasubraminan told reporters on the sidelines of opening 10th branch here.

Bharatiya Mahila Bank has been set up with an initial paid-up capital of Rs 1,000 crore. The bank aims to have a business size of Rs 60,000 crore by 2020.

Noting that the bank would be financing women with "very good ideas", she said that the bank had designed loan products keeping in mind their requirements.

"Predominantly, we will do women loaning as they do not have collateral and they do not have people to support but they have very good ideas," she said.

The bank has introduced loan products like advances for catering services, Day Care centre loan, easy SME loan, she said.

"We will look at women for lending with some concessions," he said.

Bharatiya Mahila Bank has also tied up with professional institutes like Institute of Chartered Accountants of India whereby it will advance education and setting up of practice loan to women with one per cent concession in interest.

"We are also going to have similar tie up with Institute of Corporate Secretaries of India and Institute of Cost Accountants of India," she said.

"We will also looking at tie up with motor company where women can get 90 finance of showroom price to encourage women to own car," she said.