Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Wednesday, Nov 30, 2005
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Wednesday, Nov 30, 2005 |
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Money & Banking
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Private Banks Agri-Biz & Commodities - Farm credit ICICI Bank targets farmers with customised products Our Bureau
Pune , Nov. 29 AFTER tapping a client base comorising mainly the urban rich and the corporate sector, ICICI Bank now targets the huge segment of aaloo, tamaatar and pyaaj-growing farmers. It is drawing up a comprehensive action plan to bring the agricultural community into its fold of customers. Take a look at what is on offer - 22,000 out of a total community of 40,000 grape growers in Sangli's grape belt recently availed themselves of a low cost `weather insurance' scheme offered by the bank. In May, one lakh cotton growers in Yavatmal took advantage of a scheme which covered their cultivation cost. The bank is planning to announce next month a similar scheme for potato, tomato and onion growing farmers in Pune and Ahmednagar districts of Maharashtra. "Agriculture is a high focus area for us, a segment which we hope to grow significantly by developing customised products for the market," Ms Vishaka Mulye, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, said here. The bank is considering offering similar schemes for the sugarcane industry and rolling out the low cost insurance products across the country. With an eye on the agri-community, the bank is also placing `farmer relationship managers' at taluka levels whose job it is to develop special products for the farmers. On offer for the farming community are a host of services to be delivered at the village level through Internet-enabled kiosks manned by a village-level entrepreneur and franchisees of the bank in talukas. This business model is being piloted across 60 districts, including Pune, Nashik, Ahmednagar and Sangli. It will be rolled out pan-India so that the bank's Rs 6,000 crore agri-portfolio gets a significant fillip in the years to come. "Farmers are being encouraged to take loans for productive purposes and also invest in savings and products such as mutual funds and life insurance," Ms Mulye said. With the penetration of banking in rural places very low, the bank is developing a low-cost, easy-to-use ATMs in collaboration with a professor at the IIT-Chennai. Ms Mulye said the machine would probably use fingerprints of the user to make it less complicated to use. Given the power supply scenario in the rural belt, the machine would probably use alternate energy sources to power it and will not have the customary air-conditioned rooms to house it. "It is too premature to say when we will actually roll this out but when it does, it will be a significant development for banking itself," she added. The bank's weather insurance scheme, works around weather stations, seventy of which have already come up at various locations. Once the weather conditions cross or fall short of certain laid down parameters for a particular crop, the farmer can raise a claim through ICICI Bank to ICICI Lombard.
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