City Union Bank to open 9 branches

Madurai:City Union Bank Ltd will open nine branches during October-November.

While seven of them will be in Tamil Nadu, one will be in Bhubaneshwar and another in Raipur, according to Dr N. Kamakodi, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the century-old private sector bank.

“The bank has a total business mix of Rs 25,000 crore and hopes to achieve a growth rate of 25 per cent to 30 per cent in both the business and profits. The bank has continuously declared dividend and the return on equity has been over 20 per cent,” he told Business Line on the sidelines of a seminar on ‘Perspective view on asset valuation' organised by the Institution of Valuers, Madurai branch, here on Friday.

He said the bank has 275 branches that are equally spread in rural or semi-urban and urban or metro areas. Two-thirds of the business comes from agriculture, small and medium enterprises, and trade. The bank is targeting to make three-fourths of the transactions through alternate channels such as ATM, mobile banking and Internet.

He said the bank has started priority treatment for VIP customers in Chennai, under which bank representatives will visit customers instead. This facility will be soon extended to other cities, including Madurai. The bank is currently working on a system to help customers open fixed deposits and issue overdrafts against deposits online, he said. He added that the bank was working with the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board to enable electronic payment of electricity bills free of charge and the facility would be in place in two months.