Beating high profile corporate banks such as ICICI, HDFC and SBI, the pride of cooperative banks Saraswat Bank announced 6.14 interest on savings deposits, effective from December one.
Talking to Indian Cooperative.com the Chairman of Saraswat Bank Shri Eknath Thakur said that we would be making the payout every quarter thereby giving more to our valued depositors than Yes Bank. Underlying the difference between a cooperative bank and a commercial bank, Mr Thakur said that we try to pass maximum benefits on to our depositors.
RBI had on November 25 declared deregulation on the yield on savings accounts and Saraswat Bank is first bank in the country to come up with the best rate for its depositors.
Armed with all India licence to open branches, Saraswat Bank is in expansion mode. Mr Thakur promised to open 300 branches by the end of this fiscal and aims at opening 500 branches by 2014. Recently the Bank’s Hadapsar Branch at Pune and Satara Branch of the Bank were inaugurated.
Beating the biggest cooperative bank MSCB( Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank) it has emerged number one with turn over exceeding Rs 29,500 crore. Yet the government is not ready to offer us level playing ground, lamented the Chairman. There are at least eight corporate banks smaller to us but are treated better than us, Mr Thakur added.
The impact of the savings deposit hike on margins will be about 40-45 basis points, according to Mr Thakur. The bank’s current net interest margin, a key measure of a bank’s profitability, stands at 3.78 percent. But he is confident about absorbing the higher outgo by cost rationalization.
