K Satyanarayana Raju, MD & CEO, Canara Bank
Canara Bank MD and Managing Director K Satyanarayana Raju said here on Saturday that the bank is focusing on expanding its business by launching new branches as deposit mobilization has become a challenge in India today.
The CEO said the bank opened 150 branches in FY 2023-24 and is in the process of opening another 250 in FY25.
“As deposit mobilisation has become a major challenge for bankers today in India, we have started expanding branches regularly,” Raju told PTI on the sidelines of inaugurating a regional office at West Godavari district headquarters, Bhimavaram.
He said that during the merger of Syndicate Bank with Canara Bank in 2020, as many as 1,300 branches of both lenders were closed.
In the Telugu states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, the CEO said 22 new branches will be opened in the current fiscal year.
Of the bank’s total business of Rs 23 lakh crore, he said Telugu states with 2,000 branch touch points, ATMs and cash recyclers account for business worth Rs 2.2 lakh crore.
Raju further said that Canara Bank is one of the strongest public sector banks, which is not seeing any signs of stake dilution by the government at the moment.
According to Raju, the government’s stake in the Bengaluru-based bank has been reduced to 63 per cent.
However, the CEO said the bank will sell stake in its subsidiaries Canara Robeco Mutual Fund and Canara HSBC Life Insurance Company for listing in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025 and fiscal year 2025-26 respectively.
“We are also looking at divesting and listing two of our most popular subsidiaries – Canara HSBC Life Insurance Company and Canara Robeco Mutual Fund. That will also give us a capital cushion,” Raju said.
The divestment in subsidiaries will be partial, he said, adding that promoters have to sell 25 percent stake to be eligible for listing.
Exuding confidence in the bank’s performance, Raju said the lender gave a double-digit growth guidance, a minimum growth of 10 per cent, to investors and the public in the current fiscal year in total business.
According to the CEO, Canara Bank does not compromise on its fundamentals and strives for consistent performance, noting that it is already giving a return on equity of 21 per cent, while the globally acceptable metric is 15 per cent.
Raju further highlighted that the bank is implementing Artificial Intelligence (AI), business analytics and machine learning (ML) in its day-to-day business.
Noting that these technologies are enabling effective control and monitoring of operations, he said AI, ML and business analytics are generating early warning signals to centrally monitor each account.
Raju said the bank has set up a cyber security department in which it has invested Rs 70 crore. He also noted that accounts that show suspicious transaction patterns five times will be automatically blocked.
“This way, we can control and stop that damage at the initial stages. That’s why our recoveries are better than our detours. The quality of underwriting standards has improved,” he said.
Highlighting that initiatives like this are improving the decision-making process of banks, Raju said they have also helped in generating consistency in net profits and operating profits.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
First published: August 17, 2024 | 10:07 PM IS
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