About Financial Inclusion

"Financial Inclusion - Delivery of Financial Services in a convenient manner and at an affordable cost to vast sections of disadvantaged and low income group population"
A, B, C Of Financial Inclusion: Advice, Banking & Credit
There are 4 pillars of Financial Inclusion: Savings, Credit, Remittance and Micro Insurance/Micro SIP/Micro Pensions

• Maintaining a 9% plus GDP growth rate on a consistent basis requires the assimilation of a large section of the unbanked and under banked population into the formal financial system
• Tap into hitherto inaccessible savings, enable asset creation and enhance productive efficiency through credit provision
• Financial Inclusion a pre requisite for "inclusive growth" - a key governmental agenda

• Low per transaction cost through use of Branchless banking model
• Enabling the right ICT (Information & Communication Technology) solution to provide the last mile connectivity
• Leverage economies of scale
• Offer all the 4 Pillars of Financial Inclusion : Savings, Credit, Remittance and Micro Insurance, Micro SIP and Micro Pensions

• Financial Inclusion led by the "one district one bank" model
• Financial Inclusion has started off with facilitating the disbursement of government grants
• Smart Card technology the most prevalent technology model
• Banks now moving on to integrated technology platforms that offer the flexibility of offering Smart Card, POS, Mobile and Biometric ATM based technology options
• Banks taking care to ensure that their technology solution is compliant with the evolving Micro ATM standards set by NPCI (National Payment Corporations of India) and UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India) standards of user authentication and encryption
• Banks looking at institutional Business Correspondents and not at individual operators
• A Financial Inclusion Fund for developmental activities in the FI space and a Financial Inclusion Technology Fund to meet the costs of technology adoption has been created each with an initial corpus of Rs.500 Crores with initial fund contribution from the Union Government, RBI and NABARD

• A key player in the Financial Inclusion space since 2006 with respect to disbursal of Government Grants covering 6795 villages across 9 states and 19 districts. The states covered are Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Haryana, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, Orissa
• More than 35 Lakhs No Frills accounts opened under the Financial Inclusion Initiatives
• Launched Rural Financial Inclusion Initiatives in Dindori,in Nashik District, Pulbazar Block in Darjeeling District and East Sikkim on an online POS model involving POS terminals as the transacting device and bank issued debit cards as the transacting instrument. Seven Rural Credit Cooperative Societies have been appointed as Business Correspondents to source accounts and provide banking services to the customers.
• Launched Urban Financial Inclusion Initiatives in Bangalore,Chennai and Delhi on the same POS model in association with Janalakshmi Social Services.
• Launched a remittance led FI pilot in the Dharavi - Allahabad remittance corridor in association with IDEA Cellular on a mobile payments platform wherein cash deposits, withdrawals, balance enquiries, last 5 transaction details and P2P remittances are all carried out through a mobile phone.
• Launch of customized products for the FI customer segment in the category of savings - No Frills Savings accounts, Credit - Micro Insurance:
• Micro care - A Personal Accident Insurance product of BAJAJ General Insurance Company Limited.
• Max Super Life - A Group Term Life Insurance of Max NewYork Life Company Limited.

• Achieve the following milestones by 2013 :
  • Coverage of 7,665 villages, 21.1 Lakh households
  • 105 Crs of deposit base
  • 26 Crs Loan book
• Zero in on one integrated technology platform that provides the flexibility of employing different types of transacting devices at the front end and that integrates seamlessly with our CBS at the backend; compliant with Micro ATM and UIDAI standards of user authentication and encryption
• Full scale Financial Inclusion for the beneficiaries of Government grants
• Coverage of districts/villages allotted by the Lead Bank
• Rollout of Financial Inclusion initiatives within 30 kms radius of the branches set up under the Rural Banking Strategy in the 4 States of Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu
• To use the Branchless Banking channel through Business Correspondents as an extended distribution arm of the branches under the Rural Banking initiative
• Explore collaborative distribution approaches with non financial organizations having a tested rural distribution infrastructure