Federal Bank, the largest private sector lender in Kerala, on Tuesday said it will open 100 more branches this fiscal as part of its increasing focus on lending to small businesses.
The Kochi-based lender had opened 75 branches last fiscal, its executive director Shalini Warrier told reporters on the sidelines of the three-day global SME financing summit organised by the developmental lender Sidbi.
She said one-third of its total loan book of Rs 1,86,593 crore as of June 2023, which rose close to 21 per cent on-year, was SME loans, and so are the retail and wholesale books.
“The idea of focusing on SMEs is that we should be growing in sectors of the economy which is growing faster or which has more credit needs. And the fast growing industry segment in terms of credit is SMEs. Therefore our decision to open more SME-focused branches this fiscal as well,” Warrier said.
According to her, most of these branches will come up in Tamil Nadu where it already has 200 branches besides Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, the states which have the largest concentration of small businesses.
During the past five years, the bank has almost doubled its branch presence to 1,100 from 600, she noted.
As part of the SME focus, the bank will be driving the co-lending model too.
It has already tied up with a fintech player Yubi and is in discussions with half a dozen more and will likely close co-lending agreements with at least four of them, this fiscal.
