Coimbatore: Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India Shyamala Gopinath has urged the bankers to "reorient and re-engineer their work processes and strategic orientation to gear up to meet the diverse needs of sophisticated clients while endeavouring to expand the reach of banking to the common man." This was their "real challenge," she asserted.

Speaking at the 90th anniversary of the Karur Vysya Bank and its Founders' Day celebrations here on Saturday, she lamented that the "apparent boom" in the banking sector had excluded a section of the "economy and population." Expressing happiness over the last decade's banking scenario, "one of the most dynamic periods in the development of financial sector," she said the `health check' revealed that several parameters including CRR, non-performing loans, overhead efficiency ratio, cost income ratio and business per employee had been quite satisfactory. Such improvements had come about due to several structural changes and increased competition.

The chairman of the bank, P.T.Kuppuswamy, announced that the bank, which had been declaring 100 per cent dividend since 2003-04, proposed to declare an additional 20 per cent dividend this year. The bank, which had been extremely tech-savvy, had also ventured into para banking activities such as Bancassurance and marketing mutual funds. It also planned to introduce demat services during the current fiscal.

Chairman of the Bharathiya Vidya Bhavan, Coimbatore Kendra, B.K.Krishnaraj Vanavarayar, exhorted banks to come forward to protect and develop arts, tradition and culture. The RBI should help them in this regard as this was very important at this juncture.

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