The bank's ninth British branch was opened at Kenton in February last year while the tenth will follow in Ilford as soon as regulatory approval is received from the Reserve Bank of India. The Aldgate branch has already been re-located and refurbished while the Tooting branch is next in line for similar treatment.

But of perhaps greater interest to many customers is the programme of process re-engineering that has been undertaken over the last six to seven months.

Perhaps of most interest to customers is the creation of a Credit Processing Cell, a one-stop department, which eliminates the need for the customer to make multiple visits to the bank while undergoing the sanction process, which means that credit can be dispersed more expeditiously. 'Our cell has been working well and it has resulted in us getting some very good credit proposals from some of the biggest names operating in the UK,' said Mundra.

Also new on the Bank of Baroda scene is the Centralized Back Office which is intended to make the whole process of entering retail banking operate more efficiently, smoothly and with the time taken reduced to a minimum. This has been in operation for some four months 'and we are more than happy with the outcome.'

Having planned this new infrastructure and the new processing systems the bank, which is 53 per cent government owned, decided that there must be new products to match: 'So simultaneously we have created some special deposit products to meet the requirements of our customers.' These include the Baroda Monthly so that monthly interest can be obtained to promote effective budget planning; likewise the Baroda Annual where one can look for some regular annual earning to meet customers' requirements.

Also introduced is the Baroda Smart Sweep which promotes the more effective deployment of customers' cash holdings. Under the 'smart sweep' concept any surplus funds lying in savings or chequing accounts and not earning much interest is automatically swept into a fixed deposit account and starts earning a higher rate of interest. Though some domestic banks offer a similar service what is unusual about Baroda's offering is that it features 'reverse sweep'. If, for some unexpected reason, it becomes necessary to issue an urgent cheque on a current account that will overdraw the account then it will break open the deposit account and transfer sufficient funds to overcome the temporary deficit.

'That way it works both ways — it offers flexibility to the depositor and it also enables him or her to earn a higher interest rate,' said Mundra. Also new is the flexi deposit scheme named Baroda Flexi, which is a new variant on the regular saver scheme whereby fixed amounts would be saved on a regular basis over a 12 to 60-month basis. Under the flexi scheme there is no requirement that the fixed sum must be saved every month so that if, say, the saver cannot manage the regular sum of £100 in one month it may be made up later when the extra money is available. But the real plus for the saver is that the same term deposit interest rate is paid as that on a term deposit of five years. Also the planned deposits do not have to be paid in one go every month but may be paid in several installments in a single month.

One of the major focuses of the bank over the years has been the core business of the Non-Resident Indian (NRI) population. Not only is the bank seeking to attract much more business from the local population but it is also making improvements to one of the key services that NRIs have always used: remittances.

Under the Click Funds to India programme it is now possible to send money from any bank account in the UK to any bank in India at the click of a mouse. The service is only available online, once one has registered, and is available free to a Baroda account but there will be a nominal charge for money going to another Indian bank. The bank is also making improvements to the SFLG — Small Firm Loan Guarantee — scheme that it offers, the only Indian bank to do so.

The past few months of turmoil in the British market have been a boon to Bank of Baroda: 'Not to point the finger at any high street bank but over the last 18 months many entrepreneurs found that some of the existing bankers with whom they were banking were only fair weather friends. Many of them were served notice that said that within one month you have to settle your overdraft account — there was a lot of stress.

'One thing I really take pride in: during this entire period none of our customers who were taking credit from us were faced with this kind of thing. Not that our customers were not feeling stresses but our philosophy was to sit across the table and discuss their cash flow problem, how we can help. For about two months we were carrying on this process and we discussed with most of our clients and adjusted their payments accordingly. The result I'm finding today is that most of our customers are out of stress to a considerable extent,' said Mundra.

'But this period also brought a lot of (new) clients who were facing stress and, as you will appreciate we are not one of the local banks with 1,000-2,000 branches but still we assisted in quite a few cases and in many cases they never thought that banking could be done with anyone other than the high street banks. So though probably force of circumstances brought them to us, I can say that they are quite happy and that is dispelling a lot of wrong notions that banking is only done by high street banks and other people don't know banking,' he said.

The current campaign seeks to illustrate that whether the client needs help on the liability side, the asset side, on the remittance side or merely for discussions, the answer is 'Bank on Baroda.'

top