Aiming for 10% growth in salary accounts
Bank of India highlights the USP in such accounts on various social media platforms from time to time:
Bank of India offers different types of salary accounts specifically designed for the needs of various customer segments, including employees working in the public sector. The Salary Plus scheme of the bank is offered to a chunk of government segments like central government, state government and PSU employees and paramilitary forces. Girish Singh, General Manager, Resource Mobilization of the bank, lists various subschemes of Salary Plus Scheme: “Our Jai Jawan Salary plus scheme caters to the commissioned and non-commissioned officials in the defence forces. Similarly, we have BoI Rakshak Salary account to cater to the specific needs of police personnel.”
While the bank has an all-India presence, it has more salary accounts of employees posted in all the major cities and towns of Maharashtra, Karnataka and West Bengal.
ACQUISITION, CLOSURE
Acquiring such accounts is a continuous process for banks. They acquire new accounts in every FY and loose some over a period of time. Girish Singh gives an update: “At present, we are having 1.35% of our customer accounts in our salary schemes. Despite the ill effects of covid pandemic, we have seen a growth of 7% in this segment on a yoy basis. We expect a minimum growth of 10% in this segment going forward.”
The bank has seen negligible closure of accounts and according to Girish Singh, these closures could be predominantly on account of superannuation of government officials. In such cases, the salary accounts are converted into SB Pensioners accounts, which are again loaded with various features.
The bank has approximately 600,000 salary accounts. Despite the pandemic, it has opened nearly 3500 salary accounts per month in the current year. There has been a rising trend in the average balance maintained in the salary accounts despite the pandemic. The average balance in the salary accounts is approximately `50,000 at present.
INSURANCE COVER
Bank of India is offering `group personal accidental insurance’ cover up to `10 million in case of air accident and up to `3 million in other accidental cases. Besides this, insurance cover of up to `3 million is available for permanent total disability and up to `1.5 million in case of permanent partial disability. Girish Singh says the bank reviews all its savings bank schemes at regular intervals so as to meet the changing needs of the customer and also to provide best in class products and services associated with them. Moreover, all the salary schemes come with no minimum balance requirement.
PROMOTIONS, VISITS
For promoting the salary schemes, both print as well as digital media are used by the bank. The bank’s marketing team also promotes salary schemes by visiting administrative offices of central and state government entities, public sector undertakings, municipal corporations, private companies and firms including MSMEs.
VISIBILITY & PUBLICITY
The bank takes up various initiatives from time to time to increase the number of salary accounts. It has a wide customer base which gives publicity of its products by way of word of mouth. To increase the visibility of these accounts, scheme-wise details are made available on the bank’s website. The publicity department publicizes various products through creatives and other publicity material in which insurance details are also illustrated.
Girish Singh says: “The USPs of the schemes are also displayed on Digital Signage System in more than 3000 branches, in all the major the cities and towns across the country to make customers aware of the benefits of salary saving schemes. Our marketing team gives higher priority for opening of such accounts. The USP in such accounts is the group personal accidental insurance cover, which is highlighted on various social media platforms from time to time.”
RETAIL LOAN OFFERINGS
The salary account holders of Bank of India are eligible for availing retail loans and also for concessions in processing charges. They can avail discount/waiver of processing charges for retail loans such as housing loan, vehicle loan, etc. “Our retail loan products are the most competitively priced especially in housing loans and vehicle loans with the rate of interest linked to repo rate. Apart from this, no prepayment charges are levied in case of pre-closure of the accounts by the account holders,” says Girish Singh
HIGHER PRIORITY, FOCUS
The branch staff of the bank are wellequipped to handle all the priority customers, which includes salary account holders. Since these accounts are high valued accounts, Girish Singh says a higher priority and focus are given to this segment by the relationship managers and the marketing staff posted in the branches.
Covid in some ways helped people in general to learn to relax, for it created a `forced stay-at-home’ situation. Many professionals, who had d to opt for work from home, found time to catch up on their reading as they saved on time to commute. We spoke to a cross-section of people on what books they read during the pandemic and d what they got out of it. 12 enthusiastic readers shared with us about 16 they have cumulatively read.
Of the 16 books, only one is a novel, one is a memoir, 2 are technology focused books, 2 are self-development books and the rest 10 books that explain a variety of things that have been with us for a long time like money, economics, creativity, entrepreneurship, team work, etc. The authors have new takes and new insights on these topics, which make these books popular. Here is what our readers have said.
Sowmy VJ, Consulting C Partner,
TCS, T
took to reading `Becoming’ by Michel l e Obama.
Says she: “I was able to relate to Michelle’s struggles and her intent to create an equitable q society. A lot of what M Michelle has gone through i is a great learning for me in my work on Global Inequality.”
Books is what some people turned to during the lockdown to satiate their thirst and energize their mind:
Pinakin Dave, Country Manager - India & SAARC, OneSpan,
chose `Cyber Law and Information Technology Act in India’ by Rohas Nagpal as he wanted to enhance his domain knowledge since he himself is a security business professional. “It is of utmost importance for an individual to get to the roots of the Indian IT act and he should know the law of land before he acts as a trusted advisor to industry CISOs/CIOs. I got out of the book 3Rs - Right, Roles and Responsibility of organizations and individuals while operating/utilizing cyber assets within India” he elaborates.
Manav Sachdeva, Senior Principal Analyst, Gartner,
read 2 books during the intervening period: ` Weapons of Math Destruction’ by Cathy O’Neil and `The Art of Happiness’ by Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler. About the first book, he sa says he has been having a l lingering feeling about how AI algorithms can feed on human insecurities and psychologically impact life decisions, big or small. “This book talks exactly about that - the dark side of the data! In 2020, we saw some major events that can be directly related to the influence of data on human cognition
Charu Dutt Sharma, Director and Head of SME Business at Value3,
usually rea reads one book on banking in 6 months. The last book he read was `The Great Indian Banking
Tragedy’ by Tamal Bandyopadhyay and found it very relevant. “It gave very deep perspective on banking crisis - be it public sector or private sector,” he adds.
Megha Dhamija, People & Culture Practitioner,
says she had read `The Psy Psychology of Money: T Timeless Lessons on W Wealth, Greed, and Happiness’ by Morgan Housel.
Yazdi Tantra, Director, ON-LYNE,
completed reading `Poor Economics’ by Abhijit Banerjee & Esther Duflo and says the book gives very interesting insights by 2 outstanding researchers on the real nature of poverty! “This book is a wonderful example of how economic theory eo is put into practice - cr creating control groups, a c t ual l y t e s t i ng t he hypotheses and coming out with action points based on actual behaviour of the target audience. It is a wonderful way of taking economics out of the realm of theory to actual
pra practice,” he says.
Dr Jasmine Gupta, Na t i o n a l He a d - Virtual Bank – Fintech
at Equitas Small Finance Bank,
has read (in audio version) ` Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results’ by Drew Boyd & Jacob Goldenberg. She explains the experience: “We have heard it a number of times when it comes to innovation - think outside the box! This book gives a contra perspective on how thinking inside the box can lead to far creative solutions. The author shares 6 techniques of innovation with excellent illustrations from across industries to make his point. It is a gripping book from start to end, with real application in corporate and business world.”
She shares an example of how the insights from book were put to use: “I got a proposal for creating a bundled product, in my previous role as Product Head. Having learnt the techniques of innovation through this book, I could immediately take a stand that 1+1 addition of two products is not an innovation at all, and we did not go ahead with the proposal till we had 1+1=5 proposition. It’s amazing to know how split ACs got innovated out of window ACs through the division technique, how eliminating an essential internal component through subtraction technique got the famous Walkman or shuffle iPod, how captcha is used not just for security, but lakhs of daily re-captchas are also used for scanning and digitising every book in the world through task unification technique, and innumerable other examples of attribute dependency and contradiction techniques. I highly recommend the book to all product, business and marketing professionals.”
Paroma Chatterjee, Chief Business Officer, Lendingkart,
says she actually discovered her love for reading as a child - and it was a source of joy through the pandemic. “As someone who needs to hold a lot of things together, from running the business of a company to bringing up a pre-schooler, books offer the opportunity for me to disappear down an escape tunnel when things get too stressful - like it did during the pandemic. I am especially grateful for the books that captivated me immediately and were hard to put down.
Ic I could give you a list of a all such books I read (both old and new) - but the one I would l like to talk about is re-reading Leo Tolstoy’s ambitious classic `War and Peace’, which you don’t get time to sit and read through during normal times. It’s a sprawling tale of fundamental change, the political and social upheaval that follows war, and how it transforms different characters. The sheer number of experiences that capture humanity are unbeatable - and especially thought provoking during these times,” says she.
Neil Barman, Chief Growth Officer,
Yel Yellow Messenger,
read 2 books which he says he found extremely useful - `Principles’ by
PK Gupta, Global CTO, Global Alliances Presales, Dell
Te Technologies,
says he read q quite a few books in the last 10 months such as `Atomic Habits’, ` Good
Economics for Hard Times’, `Fascinate’, `Ten Lessons For A Post-Pandemic World’ and `The Future is Faster Than You Think’. “I started Atomic Habits in March itself as lockdown started and wanted to start with making tiny changes in my routine (in non-travel world) to see what remarkable results I can get as book said on the cover page. It really made a difference as I look back at the last few months. I followed the 4 steps process of building better habits, starting from make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy and make it satisfying. It was great read and saw very good results in building some good habits and breaking bad ones,” he says.
The second good read for him is `The Future is Faster Than You Think’ by Peter Diamandis, the futurist, he says he has been following for some time. “It is an amazing book for anyone who believes in technological changes happening around us and impact they are making on the lives. Every business is being transformed, every industry is seeing mega technological changes, especially with covid, convergence of technologies such as AI, Robotics, Virtual Reality, Blockchain, 3D Printing, 5G, sensors, etc making multiplier impact, not incremental. I loved the way the author has shared the power of convergence with solid numbers to prove the point for exponential technologies’ impact on humanity and then with authenticity talking about rebirth of everything and impact it is going to make in new decade in every area such as shopping, advertising, entertainment, education, healthcare, food, insurance, finance and real estate. The numbers are mindboggling and make you believe that future is coming much faster than anyone can imagine,” he summarizes.
The most avid book reader among our respondents is
Kapil Arora, Segment Head - New Business, Strategic Tie-Ups, New Product Development, Marketing Campaign at Nippon India Mutual Fund.
He says he has read 37 books during the lockdown. Among these, the books that get the top spots according to him are: `Start-up Nation’ by Dan Senor and Saul Singer, which narrates how Israel becomes the startup hub and an