Rajasthan State Cooperative Bank has ensured that the whole of the state is covered by banking services:
Rajasthan State Cooperative Bank came into being on 14 October 1953 under the Rajasthan Cooperative Societies Act. Today, it has 5 regional offices cum branches and 11 branches in the state. Rajasthan as whole has 119 banks with 7910 branches as on 31 March 2019. The outreach is 6 villages per branch. At the district level, there are 29 DCCBs covering 33 districts with 446 branches. At the grass root level, there are 6514 PACS/LAMPS and all these together cover 100% of the geographical area of the state.
CD RATIO UP
The aggregate bank deposits in the state is Rs3.93 trillion as on 31 March 2019, which is a 13% growth over 2017-18. The Reserve Bank of India has changed the SLR norms for the DCCBs in recent past due to which the deposit of Rajasthan State Coop Bank has decreased. Says Inder Singh, MD of the bank: “Our total deposits stood at Rs31.63 billion as on 31 March 2019, while our CD ratio has increased to 326%, compared to 254% in the previous year.” The bank probably is the first cooperative bank in the country to have its own currency chest, which is located at its Tonk Road branch.
HEALTHY LOAN GROWTH
The total outstanding advances of banks in Rajasthan amount to Rs3.34 trillion as on 31 March 2019, which is 21.27% higher than the figure in 2017-18. Aggregate CD ratio is 87.37% against the RBI benchmark of 60%. There is no unbanked district/block in the state.
Rajasthan State Coop Bank has assisted the state government in providing interest-free crop loans to farmers subject to timely repayment. It registered an annual growth of 9.19% in own funding, while the reserves and provisions have increased from Rs6.79 billion to Rs7.44 billion in 2018-19.
Inder Singh says the bank’s loan outstanding was Rs103 billion as on 31 March 2019. The level of recovery against demand (principal) stood at 99.76%. The bank had Rs533.7 million net profit in the last FY. Some 732,986 new farmer registrations have taken place and Rs4.62 billion of short term agri-credit has been disbursed to the applicants in the current FY, out of the sanctioned amount of Rs5.80 billion.
The bank has been able to record an employee productivity is Rs548 million and per branch business is Rs7.6 billion. Some 27,280 kiosks of the bank are operative, out of which 18,032 are operated by eMitras and 9248 by PACS, and these have done a financial business of Rs39.56 billion till October 2019. The bank is now planning to introduce multifunction kiosks at 3 branches and passbook printing kiosks at 5 branches.
The bank is now member of credit information companies and credit reports of the loan applicants are generated during loan appraisal process to ensure quality of loans.
MASSIVE ATM EXPANSION
ATMs have been installed at 12 branches of Rajastan State Coop Bank. There are 201 ATMs of various cooperative banks across Rajasthan. Inder Singh says Installation of 1000 ATMs is being completed. The installation is being done in coordination with the Raj COMP Info Services of the government of Rajasthan. Also, 2095 microATMs have been installed across 29 DCCBs. The bank has also received North Western Railway’s bid to install ATMs at 11 railway stations in Jaipur division.
IT SERVICES ON CARDS
The bank has implemented CBS at the HO and all its 17 branches. It has also installed a financial switch at its datacenter, while it is now part of the NFS platform to issue RuPay debit cards.
The bank has also introduced eCommerce services. It has obtained direct membership of RTGS/NEFT. Aadhaar-based DBT services is part of the services offered by the bank, while it has completed AUA/KUA testing. Inder Singh says modalities have been completed for making DCCBs sub-AUA of the bank and after NPCI testing, DCCBs shall be onboarded as sub-AUA.
The bank is providing SMS alert facility informing the customers about transactions in their accounts, as also offering account statements by email through the bank’s own email server installed at its datacenter.
Says Inder Singh: “We have received RBI permission to start mobile banking. We have already finalized the vendor and the service is expected to go live before January 2020. We are now in the
process of integrating CBS to the Public Financial Management System of the government. We are also in the process of implementing Central Know-Your-Customer Registry (CKYCR).”
The bank has also applied to RBI through NABARD to start internet banking.
The bank has partnered with several IT companies – TCS for CBS and financial inclusion gateway, NICSI for data center and IT infrastructure supplies, Cisco for routers, switches, firewall and IPS, Cyberroam for firewall and Gemalto for tokens and firewalls. The other vendors include REIL, IBM India, Logic Systec, FIS, Cash Link Global Systems, Gupshup India, BSNL, Hewlett Packard enterprises, Dell India, Acutec Global services, NPCI, IFTAS, Uniflair, Safenet, RISL and Vision Tek.
DCCB COMPUTERIZATION
The bank has created a centralized data center for all DCCBs in the state and all the 477 branches of these DCCBs are now on the CBS platform. These banks can now offer SMS alerts and statement of accounts by email. These banks have also started eCommerce services, which are now operational in Ajmer, Baran, Barmer, Bikaner, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Jhalawar, Jhunjhunu and Nagaur and 18 DCCBs have created their own websites and the rest are in process of doing so.
The DCCBs have also obtained NPCI certification for onboarding to the NFS platform and they are now issuing RuPay debit cards and RuPay Kisan cards to customers.
They are also offering RTGS/NEFT facilities to customers under sub-membership. Inder Singh says these banks are also working on providing treasury, internet and mobile banking facilities.
One of the notable achievements of the bank is the creation of a Financial Inclusion Gateway, to take banking services to remote rural areas and at the panchayat samiti/gram panchayat levels.
The main feature of the gateway is that it extends the CBS environment of the cooperative banks to the PACS/LAMPS/eMitras, who operate as the BCs. An online portal has been developed on the Financial Inclusion Gateway for registration, approval and disbursement of loans through the automated digital member register (DMR) created in CBS.
Farmers can withdraw money through ATM and microATM using RuPay Kisan and debit cards, Aadhar enabled Payment System (AePS) and through withdrawal vouchers in the branches.
