Ms Naushaba Hasan shares an experience from Chhattisgarh ..

COLLECTIVE FULFILLMENT EXPERIENCE SHARED BY Ms NAUSHABA HASAN, BRANCH MANAGER, MANDHAR BRANCH  DURING CONTRIBUTION LAB FOR REGION-7, RAIPUR , BHOPAL CIRCLE

During 2009-10, the advance level of my branch had doubled from the level of 2008-09, and NPA level was also below the level of March 2009. In percentage terms it was almost half the NPS percentage level of the previous f.y. It was some time around the end of January 2010. We had  just recieved the closure of our RFIA report. Business budgets were almost achieved and the time seemed to be perfect for some new initiative.

I called a staff meeting on Saturday evening so as to congratulate the staff on upgradation of the branch's rating. During the meeting one important point of discussion was recovery in written off accounts. This will also increase the income of the branch. I agreed to it and invited the suggestions from other staff members. The FO immediately came up with the list of written off accounts in which we can make the efforts. I asked him to show me such a/c's, on which he called the messenger to bring pb/rd/w'off registers.the messenger's response was prompt"sahab 10-12 registers hain, kaun sa laaun"?i asked her to bring all the register.from all those torn out register it was not difficult to make out that with some planned and directed efftorts, we can produce results.

All the staff members agreed to it, though a few had their own apprehensions. Everyone was aware that followup of old accounts that were written off in 80s or 90s is not an easy task but due to the atmosphere of teamwork prevalent in the branch the staff were self-motivated and all of them wanted to be associated with such a challenging task it and also wished to contribute something towards branch profitability apart from doing their normal routine tasks.

After a meaningful discussion we were able to allocate different tasks to different staff members as per their personal capabilities. The special assistants who were not that well versed with the computers were given the task of indexing and noting particulars from age old registers, CRA who was tech savy was given the work of mail merging and messenger and FO were assigned the job of going to villages, meeting the borrowers and explaining to them the opportunities available to the old defaulters to come clean of their bad debts. Around 100+ letters were sent to the customers who defaulted in meeting their loan obligation in the past. For the past few years the annual recovery from w/off accounts dwindled around 1 or 1.5 lacs, i set a target that if we could be able to double it say can make a recovery of 2 or 3 lacs we can say that yes our efforts were successful!!!

Finally the day of recovery camp arrived. Except for me and one of my assistants who was looking after cash counter that day, all the staff were at panchayat bhavan, village tekari. The response was really good. A crowd of more then 50 people had come their for enquiring about their case. My staff members very patiently explained to them the detailed process. The untiring efforts of my staff started yielding results in the next 15 days. Each one of us would come to office by 9:30 a.m.and sit in the branch till 9:00 or some times 9:30 in the night(since it was february and annual closing was nearing, we had a lot of other works to do).

I took the responsibility of counselling people and preparing compromise proposals (for getting it sanctioned from RBO). The effort was to send everything in one go, as we had convinced the customers for final loan closure and did not want the customers to come to the branch again and again for the same work.

And God..........what were the results????? We were able to recover some 6.30 lacs plus recovery in written off accounts......50 accounts that were written off in late 80s or 90s with 24 cases of compromise and rest with full recovery along with interest. The RM personaly acknowledged the efforts made by us and sent us an appreciation letter for the same. In the P-review meeting of february 2010 our branch was termed as model example for recovery and our RM asked me to share the success story of my branch, so that other can also follow it.

Budget achieved, a+ rating for the first time in the history of the branch,reduced NPA level and sone pe suhaga w/off account recovery bonanza along with a privilege of heading a model branch.....what else cu a bm ask for?????????????????all due to efforts of my staff... my first experience of heading a branch is jz superb,isnt it?????

Contributed by NAUSHABA HASAN, Branch Manager, SBI, MANDHAR.

Courtesy: K. Natarajan, Citizen Facilitator, SBLC, Raipur