TEAM?HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: HDFC Bank launched its Rural Financial Literacy Initiative in Goa under the aegis of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), today. HDFC Bank will conduct financial literacy camps in 39 rural branches across Goa.
While addressing the media, Ravi Narayanan, branch banking head (West) for HDFC Bank said that the bank with this initiative has had rewarding experiences specially in the mining affected belt of Goa. “The collapse of the mining industry in Goa has meant that a lot of businesses dependant on mining have gone bust. But our initiative to equip such people with skills to make them financially independent have begun showing results,” he said
“In addition, more people are being brought into the banking fold by going deeper into rural geographies and extending our reach in the hinterland in order to support inclusive growth,” added Narayanan.
Each branch will serve two neighbouring villages, enabling both adults and school children from over 75 rural communities in the state to attain a conceptual understanding of financial products and services. This initiative is in line with the central bank’s recent circular which recommended that banks should scale up financial literacy efforts in rural areas through their branch networks.
HDFC Bank will use the Financial Literacy Guide, provided by the RBI as the standard curriculum while conducting these camps. This material is currently available in Hindi and English.
HDFC Bank has gone a step further in Goa and is the first bank to translate the guide into Konkani, which is the local language. This has been done in consultation with the RBI and will greatly increase the impact and efficacy of these camps in Goa.
The Financial Literacy Guide is a comprehensive document that contains a note for trainers, guidelines for banks on how to conduct the camps, and financial literacy material. It also contains as well as a Financial Diary to track expenditure and a set of 16 posters. The purpose of this guide is to create financial awareness and educate the common man on a number of topics such as management of money, importance of savings, advantages of saving with banks, other facilities provided by banks and benefits of borrowing from banks.
HDFC Bank now has 53% of all branches in its network located in semi-urban and rural areas. It has 63 branches in Goa of which 41 are located in rural or semi-urban areas. As of June 30, 2013, the Bank had a distribution network with 3,119 branches and 11,088 ATMs in 1,891 cities/towns.
