A contribution story from Kolaras

1. Name of the Branch : Kolaras, Distt: Shivpuri (MP)

2. Brief Description of the project:

a.      Brief Background – The Branch was a semi-urban branch with agriculture incentive finances. Branch had recently been transferred to manual system to Bank Master System. Branch was having large number of agriculture accounts and during the time of the migration, in large number of cases, different accounts of the same customer viz KCC, ATL, SB etc were erroneously given different customer numbers in Bank Master. Therefore, it was very difficult to maintained/monitor the accounts of a customer which might result in turning on all account as NPA due non recovery in one of the accounts as per RBI guidelines. In all the cases field officer has to refer to the old ledger sheets. Further there were large numbers of inspection registers not maintained area/village wise which had resulted in difficulties in recording the inspection done by the branch officials into the registers. Most of the time field officer had to carry all the inspection registers during the filed visits, which used to give lot of inconvenience in handling the bulky weight. As a result of this the branch had not been able to carry out meaningful inspections and recovery percentage was abysmally low at 21% and rating of the branch was FWR.

b.      The project: To have a proper mitigation of above shortcomings/problems,  need was felt to resolve captioned issues by-

Ø      Opening of different accounts of the same customer under the single customer number. It was preferred to take the base of ATL account. Account in different customer numbers were to be closed with new account number feeded in the remark column and balance were to be transferred in new account opened in customer number given for ATL account.

Ø      Taking photocopies of the all the written leafs of the inspection registers and arrange them village wise/area wise. Thereafter indexing was to be done for the each leaf and index numbers were to be feeded in the memo level III of the account in Bank Master. All photocopied leaves were to be kept in box files so that next accounts inspection leaf was to be filed in the same village index.

Ø      Challenge:  The task was big and it had to be done in one go. Therefore, it had been decided to carry out the task by involving each member of the staff and in the three continuous holidays ahead on 13^th ,14^th, 15^th of April on account of Baishakhi, Ambedkar Jayanti and a Sunday. Branch staff was motivated and educated to handle the captioned project. All the Branch Staff had agreed to complete the project in three holidays despite the fact that branch has just finished the closing work and statutory audit just completed.

c.      Project implementation: During three holidays the work had been carried out on war footing. Task for new account opening has been assigned to the system administrator with the help of one assistant. Arranging of the photocopies of the inspection leaves by area wise/village wise had been done by using the large banking hall, by the filed officer with the branch messenger. Indexing of the leaf and feeding in the system was carried out the Branch Manager himself. During three days due to the joint efforts branch was able to accomplish the project in time.

3.            Benefits: Tracking of customer accounts become easy. Branch has been able to carry out meaningful inspections. Filed officer need not to carry all the inspection registers during the field visits. Meaningful recordings were made of recovery efforts. During the inspection time is was very easy and smooth to verify the inspection records to the auditor. Inspection rating of the Branch has been improved to Well Run. Recovery percentage in the next year has significantly been improved from 21% to 72%. Operating staff also feel convenience in operating.

Contributed by

Hemant Karaulia

            Chief Manager,

CPC LHO, Bhopal