Indian Banking will maintain its growth momentum

Growth in credit, mergers and acquisitions, digital initiatives by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), and the shift in preference for rupee credit over external commercial borrowing (ECB) were the major happenings in the banking sector in 2022, a top official of the South Indian Bank said looking back at the year gone by.

“Set up in 1929, South Indian Bank has a network of 928 branches and 1,156 ATMs. The bank’s advances stood at ₹67,963 crore as on September 30, 2022, with retail, small and medium enterprises, and agricultural advances accounting for 70 per cent of the book,” Murali Ramakrishnan, MD and CEO, told IANS in an interview.

The Bank’s Vision 2024 focuses on the 6 Cs – capital, CASA, cost-to-income, competency building, customer focus, and compliance, Ramakrishnan added.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has issued a Master Direction on Digital Payment Security Controls and these guidelines will create an enhanced and enabling environment for customers to use digital payment products in a more safe and secure manner and provide more clarity to banks to partner with Fintech and other digital partners.

Also, RBI launched a pilot project on Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). The use of the wholesale digital rupee is for the settlement of secondary market transactions in government securities as it would reduce transaction costs. CBDC may benefit consumers in terms of liquidity, scalability, adoption, the convenience of transactions with anonymity, and quicker settlement.