It is a story of the turnaround of Assam Co-operative Apex Bank which was in loss a couple of years ago but in flat two years of tireless efforts by a true professional changed everything- from a loss of Rs 13 crore in 2017 to the profit of Rs 12 crore in 2019.
Having experience of working with private banks including Axis and HDFC bank, the man in question- Shashank Shastri joined as the Managing Director of the Assam Co-operative Apex Bank a couple of years ago to write a different script. The bank began posting profits within the span of 2 years and has embarked on the growth path.
It is to be mentioned though Shastri is by profession a Chartered Accountant and has no experience of working in any of the cooperative banks but put in hard efforts to change the bank’s situation.
Sharing the details with Indian Cooperative Shastri said, “I took over the charge of the bank in June 2017 and the bank was in net loss of 12.75 crore as on 31st March 2017. But as on 31st March 2019 the bank earned a net profit of Rs 11.41 crore and expecting that as on 31st March 2020 our bank will earn an operating profit of around Rs 30 crore”, he added.
“After taking the charge I faced many challenges in running the bank and there was a need to change the working style and mindset of employees towards their work where I got success to a great extent. We had done cost cutting and curbed the expenses up to 40 percent and also reduced the number of employees”, Shastri underlined.
Besides, our total business has risen from Rs 4,900 crore (31st March 2017) to over Rs 7,000 crore as on 31st March 2020. Deposits rose from Rs 2,870 crore as on 31st March 2017 to Rs 3,474 crore as on 31st March 2020 whereas loans and advances increased from Rs 850 crore to Rs 1,437 crore and investment grew from Rs 1,181 crore to over Rs 2,027 crore”, he said while sharing the figures.
“If we talk about the NPA situation of the bank as on 31st March 2017 the Gross NPA and Net NPA was 10.72% and 5% respectively which falls down to 7.18 percent and 1.73 percent as on 31st March 2019 and we are expecting that as on 31st March 2020 the Net NPA and Gross NPA will be 1.50% and less than 6 percent respectively”, he added.
Sharing his thoughts about the future goals, Shastri said we are planning to launch the mobile banking facility in the bank and install micro ATMs. Our plan is to upgrade the bank with the latest technology. At present, there are 30 onsite ATMs and a network of 67 fully automated branches and 6 zonal offices across Assam.
The bank has a customer base of 1 million and issued 65k debit cards among the customers. The customer base increased from 8.85 lakh in 2017 to 10.22 lakh in 2020.
In Assam there is two tier cooperative structure it means PACCs at village level and Apex bank at State level. There are over 774 PACCs in Assam and 541 societies are adopted by the bank. Finance has been given to 301 PACCs.