SBI Bank held adalat took up loan recovery cases

In Patna State Bank of India (SBI) organized a Bank Adalat in its Gulzarbagh branch in which around 53 cases were disposed of. The proceedings of the adalat were personally monitored by SBI AGM Anjani Kumar Sinha under the direct supervision of DGM T V S Ramana Rao. Hearing of around 53 cases related to loan recovery was taken up and were harmoniously disposed of on the spot, Sinha informed.

AGM told, the bank will take severe action against all those people who fail to repay the loan money in time. The banking institution will have to forcefully take legal action against the defaulters under the Bank Act and their mortgaged property will be attached if the defaulters did not repay the loan amount within the specific time, the AGM told and added borrowers must cooperate with the bank and try to maintain good relation with the bank.

The AGM told TOI that the bank is holding Bank Adalat at regular intervals at different places adjoining the state capital in order to help borrowers, especially defaulters, to pay their loan money at their doorsteps. In addition, bank will prefer to get into compromise with defaulters on some genuine points and help them to repay their loan easily, he said and added bank was able to recover around Rs 5 lakh at this adalat and large number of borrowers came to the adalat facing bad weather condition.

At the branch at the time of proceedings Chief Managers B P Singh, Binod Kumar, M P Singh and loan recovery in-charge Ashutosh Narain Sinha were also present.

SBI to increase fee-based income through PoS terminals

In 2010-11 State Bank of India (SBI), country’s largest lender will be setting up about 150,000 point of sale (PoS) terminals for debit and credit card payments across India. This way bank will be able to increase its fee-based income. Country’s largest bank, SBI said in its Request for Proposal (RFP), "The present EoI (expressions of interest) is for the purchase of 135,000-150,000 POS terminals across the country during the first year of operations or 2010-11 and also for the managed services during the warranty period or the first year of deployment."

SBI in the first five years of its operations has plans to install around 600,000 PoS terminals for this last year bank floated RFP for the selection of joint venture partner for merchant acquiring business and the selection process is in the final stage. As per the report from SBI the last date for submission of bids is January 25, 2010. The bank is also thinking of acquiring the PoS terminals on an outright purchase basis. Bank is also looking at other options like leasing the terminals as the asset return or non-return and periodical rentals.

To manage the business of the merchants a wholly –owned subsidiary system will be adopted which will include acquiring bank identification numbers (BINs) from the schemes, as well as managing services for PoS terminals, among others. The managed services will include installing PoS terminals at customer location, their replacement, merchant training and maintenance, among others.

Banks’ plan of business circulation based on the new line of operation is focused on a pan-India scale, with metro, urban, semi-urban and rural centers, urban, semi-urban and rural centers, SBI said. At present the State Bank Group has installed more than 18,000 automated teller machines (ATMs) across the country and has issued over 60 million debit cards.