Still banking on pride

Recently an interesting business event happened in city. HT-Mint, the newly launched Hindustan Times and Wall Street Journal joint venture newspaper, organised a South Banking CEO Conclave. The panellists included six CEOs of public sector banks (PSBs), based in South India, and two private sector bank bosses, who discussed on human resource development in banks.

The moderator Tamal Bandyopadhyay was not kind with his opening remarks on PSBs. He said that the figures of Indian Banks' Association, the country's premier banker body, speak for themselves. Between 2004 and 2007, India's new private banks have grown their assets by 38% and their employee strength by 43%. During this period, Indian PSBs saw their assets grow by 17%, while the employee strength actually went down by 1%. More than 63,000 public sector bank employees are set to retire by 2010 and bulk of them would be officers. The average age of a PSB employee is close to 50, in the private sector, the average employee age of is 28.

While the younger professionals are preferring the new private banks, how are the PSBs going maintain their growth, queried Tamal. Defending themselves on this tough ground, M.B.N. Rao, CMD of Canara Bank said "less recruitment clearly means that we now have better productivity. We get more work done by people working on computers. Age of a professional does matter, but in a positive way. Have you ever seen anybody preferring a younger lawyer or a surgeon?"

But the best response came from Prakash Mallya, CMD of Vijaya Bank. "At the entry level, we are offering quite a competitive salary package to get the best talent on par with any of the big software firm. But we cannot keep pace after a couple of years. Our increment structure is low and others overtake us easily. But let me tell you, money should not be the only criteria, loyalty to the company and the kind of pride you enjoy in a PSB is more important. But these days, youngsters are not bothered about these things. See for instance, our moderator Tamal was with the Business Standard when I met him few months ago. Now I find him here in Mint!" That was some response!

Bamboo as building material!

Can Bamboo, the humble poor man's wood, be used as a building material for modern construction... This intriguing thought was introduced to me when I had been to "Sustainable Living 2007," a ecological awareness seminar organised by the Centre for Green Building Materials & Technology. There was a presentation on bamboo's commercial applications. Recently, I met Vaibhav Kaley who has started a new venture named Wonder Grass, which is being incubated by the N S Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning inside the IIM-B campus.

Though the thought of using bamboo for construction sounds a little strange, it has been the primary building material for centuries to both Indian and Chinese civilizations. Even today, the rural countryside in both these countries use bamboo for building huts. However, it is would be a tough task to convince architects and civil engineers handling large building projects.

With a tensile strength superior to mild steel (withstanding upto 52000 pounds of pressure psi) and the lowest weight-to-strength ratio, bamboo is the strongest wood. It is also the widest available building material with one of the widest ranging habitats of more than 1500 species thriving in diverse terrain from sea level to 12000 feet. Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on earth, which attains its maximum height in first four months of shooting, sometimes growing as much as 2 inches an hour. Some species grow one and half meters a day.

To highlight these strengths of bamboo, Wonder Grass venture is organising a half-day seminar at the IIM Bangalore campus on 15 December 2007. Facility managers, architects, civil engineers and other decision makers are invited to attend this seminar to build their awareness about bamboo. Contact: Vaibhav Kaley at 9886869173, or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it \n This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it "

Credibility under question

Who has not received a call from a credit card or personal loan sellers these days? Have you observed that these calls almost always happen when you are in a serious situation at office... why don't these calls happen on a landline at your residence... why these calls never cease even after you register yourself to the ‘do-not-call' register on the bank's website...

Intriguing questions, aren't they... but looking from the other side of the coin, banks, particularly private and foreign banks are quite desperate to increase their market share in personal lending segment. However, what has been observed is, only 1 out of the 100 calls ever gets converted into a an actual deal.

Lets assume that you are one of the hundred calls that got converted into a credit seeker. Every time a bank calls you for a credit card or personal loan, they require your bonafide documents. These days they want more than just residential address, salary slip, bank statement, age and photo id proofs. Now they are hell-bent on grabbing your present company appointment letter, previous company relieving letter, income tax Form 16 and the list goes on!

But despite all this documentation, a bank still cannot ascertain a working professional's credit worthiness nor catch a fraud. There is an urgent need for a unified online database system which can ascertain a person's credibility without the hassle of background check every time a person applies for credit. Today each bank has a huge ‘black list' of defaulters and fraudsters who can easily move onto another bank seeking credit. Thankfully abroad, banks have found a new concept of public tracing service to catch defaulters through an online service named ‘DebtCatchers.com'. In India, the Credit Bureau of India (CIBIL) is set to launch a credit score database that will reflect the creditworthiness of every borrower in the country. The database which was supposed to be launched by Diwali, is set to contain details related to loans and their repayment. Lets hope this service will bring relief to both the harassed borrower and the bank. Log onto www.cibil.com

Roving Reporter - Levine Lawrence

---

Be first to comment this article

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.