Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday said that banks will have to be a lot more customer-friendly not in terms of taking adverse risks, but in how they engage with and serve customers.
During an interaction with stakeholders belonging to industry, the Finance Minister noted that Prime Minister has told citizens that 'I am the security behind you, please take loans, you don't need to give security.'
“This is the thinking behind MUDRA and SVANIDHI schemes; and the performance in servicing the loan has been very good", the minster said.
The Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) Secretary, Tuhin Kanta Pandey said that the Self Help Group movement has made tremendous progress in group entrepreneurship, and millions of women have come out to manage businesses. “For individual entrepreneurs, we can learn from group activity and see how it can be translated into other areas of entrepreneurship" he added
The Revenue Secretary Tarun Bajaj noted that balance sheets of both banks and the corporate sector have started looking up. “We want our growth rate to be high enough in the coming years so that we can help the economy. SBI needs to work out some system to push credit into the economy, we request SBI to take leadership and address concerns of MSMEs and large businesses too " he said
"Secretary, Finance & Dept of Expenditure, T.V. Somanathan; Secretary, Economic Affairs, Ajay Seth; Secretary, Revenue; Secretary, DIPAM, Tuhun Kanta Pandey; Secretary, Financial services, Sanjay Malhotra; Chief Economic Adviser, V Anantha Nageswaran, Chairperson, CBIC, Vivek Johri and Chairperson, CBDT, Jagannath Bidyadhar Mahapatra were also present for the interaction," the ministry of finance said in a statement.
SBI Chairman Dinesh Khara said the focus is on increasing the reliance on end-to-end digitalisation of the process, which will ensure a hassle-free experience.
He said in the next two months, the bank will go fully digital for lending. Also, provided there is credible cashflow visibility available to a bank, the credit growth to small businesses can touch that of personal loans over time.
