Prime Minister to inaugurate India’s first all-women bank in Mumbai on November 19

CMD designate Usha 

PRIME Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi will inaugurate country’s first all-women Bharatiya Mahila Bank (MMB) in Mumbai on November 19, the birth anniversary of former prime minister Indira Gandhi. The bank will be inaugurated in Mumbai, the financial capital of India, as the model code of conduct is in force in poll-bound Delhi. Delhi goes for Assembly polls on December 4. Finance minister P Chidambaram will also attend the inauguration ceremony.

The bank will have...

25 branches across eight locations in Kolkata, Guwahati, Chennai, Bangalore, Jaipur, Lucknow, Mysore and Indore. To begin with, the bank would employ 225 women from other PSU banks, apart from some fresh recruits. The bank will have 39 branches (including mobile and satellite branches) and 127 ATMs by the end of the first year of its operations and is likely to expand this to 778 branches and 2,088 ATMs by the end of the seventh year.

The new bank should have 33,299 customer accounts by the end of the first year and 55,32,912 customer accounts by the end of the seventh year of operations.

The Mumbai branch is located in the iconic Air India building at Nariman Point. Women employees from other public sector banks have been invited to join the all-women bank on deputation or resign from their current positions to join the bank and there has been a good response from many of them.

In his budget speech, the finance minister had announced setting up of all-women bank with an initial capital of Rs 1,000 crore. “Women are heads of many banks today, including two public sector banks, but there is no bank that exclusively serves to women. Can we have a bank that lends mostly to women and women-run businesses, that supports women SHGs and women’s livelihood, that employs predominantly women, and that addresses gender-related aspects of empowerment and financial inclusion? I think we can,” the finance minister had said in his speech.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) gave its in-principal approval for the Bharatiya Mahila Bank in June.

Earlier, the government appointed Usha Ananthasubramanian as the chairperson and managing director (CMD) of the bank. Before joining Bharatiya Mahila Bank, she was an executive director with Punjab National Bank. The government is likely to name the CEO after the Reserve Bank of India has issued the licence.

The key objective of the bank is to focus on the banking needs of women and promote economic empowerment. The bank had advertised 115 vacancies for this rank recently, and selected 103 candidates, according to the results notification. The initial monthly salary in the probationary officer grade is about Rs 24,450 in a metropolitan centre.