ICICI Bank focuses on rural banking

KOLKATA: The country's largest private sector lender, ICICI Bank on Wednesday said it will target the rural market through intensive use of technology like internet and mobile banking.

The bank, which has a 30 lakh strong customer base in rural areas, was contemplating to increase its pace through issue of bio-metric cards, ICICI Bank Deputy Managing Director Nachiket Mor said at a banking conclave here.

He said the bank has already issued 1.40 lakh bio-metri cards and 1,000 such cards were issued per day.

He said the Bank last year had done Rs 20,000 crore in business in rural areas.

Asked about reverse mortgage, Mor said he was not in favour of this form of financing at this point of time.

ICICI Bank generally financed cash flows and not co-lateral, which is reverse mortgage. "We are not interested in reverse mortgage at this moment," he said.

ICICI Bank, which already has presence in Russia was looking at emerging countries to strengthen its overseas presence, he said.