Axis Bank planning greater push into rural retail lending

Axis Bank is working to deepen its presence across the country’s rural regions with what it calls its ‘deep geo strategy’. This will involve the identification of key branches and dovetailing those to help the bank’s growth, said a senior executive.

Sumit Bali, president and head, retail lending and payments, Axis Bank, said that as part of the deep geo strategy, the lender has identified some of the rural and semi-urban markets where it will have an asset-led strategy to scale up its banking assets and liabilities.

“As part of this initiative we identified about a third of our branches — 1,577 branches — where we’ve launched this asset-led strategy. “It has taken very good shape. Disbursements are up about 26% year-on-year, and growth continues to be pretty strong,” Bali said during an online press conference.

The project is part of the bank’s philosophy of a combination of assets and liabilities coming together with technology to ensure that it becomes a significant player in these markets.

“This is an identified strategy that we want to be a significant player in the rural part of the country and we’ve also made a strategic investment in the CSC (common service centres), which will help us set up a strong distribution footprint across the country,” Bali said.

Axis Bank has already identified close to 5,000 village-level entrepreneurs as distribution points across the country.
It is using these branches to distribute its asset products, such as farmer funding, gold loans, small business banking, home loans and two-wheeler loans. Eighty eight percent of the loans originated under the project are secured loans.

“We are very excited with this initiative going forward and we see strong growth month-on-month and this will, therefore, also help us become a significant strategic player in the overall rural side of the country.
“It will also generate for us priority-sector and agri assets, going forward,” Bali said.