Bank of Maharashtra has decided to open 215 new branches within a year as it seeks to expand both its credit and deposit books.

The Pune-headquartered bank plans to have at least one branch in all the 780 districts of the country as part of its ambition to have a pan India footprint.

 “We are expanding in all the states except Maharashtra and Gujarat. The bank will open 215 new branches over the next 12 months as it expands outside Maharashtra for a pan India presence. Forty of these new branches will be set up by the end of this month,” Bank of Maharashtra managing director and chief executive officer AS Rajeev told indianbankingnews.com.

 The state-owned bank is now present in 540 districts in the country, up from just 280 districts five years back. By the end of the second quarter of this fiscal, the bank will be extending its footprint to 650 districts of the country.

Bank of Maharashtra, which has a network of 2,053 branches, is looking to expand it to 2,150 branches by the end of March 2023.

The bank has adopted a hub & spook model for its expansion. It will have a total of 600 such branches by the end of FY2023

Each branch will be surrounded by 5-6 customer service points. Each customer service point is a 100 square feet mini branch, which will be open for four to five days in a week. The operations will be overseen by a business correspondent.

The operational cost of each customer service point is Rs 30,000 a month and the employees are all outsourced, Rajeev said.

This will help the bank to be present in tier 2 and tier 3 sort of locations, he added.

The customer service point will mobilise deposits and get credit requests, which will be referred back to the branch. 

The bank will have 150 branches in Kerala, most of which are already operational except for 15 branches that are to be set up in a year’s time. The branches in Kerala have already started bringing in Rs 6,000 crore of business.

The rapid branch expansion, Rajeev said, is helping the bank to maintain a CASA ratio of 56%. This is much higher than the banking sector’s CASA average of 45-48%.

The bank’s credit growth at 22% is also much higher than the industry average.

Bank of Maharashtra has five housing finance branches and 10 branches for vehicle financing. 

 The bank has also opened five agri investment credit branches for funding small dams and other agri-related activities.