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Indian Bank Has Big Expansion Plans For Unbanked Africa

Indian Bank Has Big Expansion Plans For Unbanked Africa

Canara Bank with 4,750 branches in India has opened a branch in South Africa and has big plans for lots more in rural and unbanked areas as part of its global expansion plans, BusinessStandard reports.

From its beginnings in Southern India, the bank now has a presence in Shanghai, London, Hong Kong, Moscow and Bahrain with 1,027 new branches added in 2013 alone. Another 1,200 branches are planned in 2014, according to Rajiv Dubey, chairman and managing director of Canara Bank. He spoke at the Johannesburg launch.

“We have big expansion plans abroad besides domestic expansion,” Dubey said. “We
have plans for Durban, Cape Town, Pretoria, and deep into South Africa as well.

Dubey said the bank opened 18 percent of its branches in 2014 in rural and semi-rural areas of India and the results were surprising.

“We opened 263 branches in unbanked areas where viability takes time but we found to our surprise that the business per branch was much more than what we had expected,” he said. “With that belief, we are going into the new areas in South Africa also.”

“We will target not only the Indian diaspora and PIOs (Persons of Indian Origin) but also the local population. We are doing this in Hong Kong and London in a big way. Our overseas business has gone up from 2 percent to 6 percent in one year and we are confident of
hitting the 10 percent mark.”

Dubey said there are plans to go into Tanzania, Mozambique, Germany, Dubai, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand. A branch is scheduled to open in New York in June.