Mercantile Bank Ltd has strengthened its efforts to fortify the theme of 'financial inclusion', a tool for combating poverty and knowledge banking as well.

Financial inclusion aims to include more people in the banking process.

In Bangladesh, where only 13 percent of the population has a bank account and 33 percent a mobile phone, relevant parties are considering using mobile phones to deliver banking to the unbanked.

"Since financial inclusion is viewed as a high policy priority in Bangladesh, for more inclusive and more equitable economic growth, we have initiated a good number of projects aiming to strengthen the theme with a thrust on SME, agro-economy and IT-driven technology," managing director (acting) of the bank AKM Shahidul Haque told The Financial Express in an interview recently.

"The bank has now 61 branches, but by the end of this month (December), we will have four more branches, of them 46 will be urban, 14 rural and 5 SME/Agri," Mr Shahidul added.

He said in compliance with the Bangladesh Bank directive, the Mercantile Bank is working to bring the huge rural population under the banking network to ensure economic development.

"Moreover, we are committed to empower women class of the society as far as economic activities are concerned because women consists more than fifty per cent of our total population," the Mercantile Bank chief executive said.

He said the deposit and credit schemes of Mercantile Bank has reached to the remote villages of the country in testimony to the bank's thrust on financial inclusion.

"The biggest strength of the bank lies on its expanded customer base, at present, we have more than half a million deposit customers," Mr Shahidul added.

Putting an accent on the thriving IT-driven technology, Mr Shahidul said the new generation bank has already adopted core banking solution (T 24) from Swiss-based Temenos.

"We have already shared ATM network but we will have our own network in near future," the Mercantile MD (acting) said.

He said clients will get the opportunity to transfer money through using mobile technology by early next year and moreover the bank plans to launch retail banking through mobile. This will enable the bank to provide internet-based services to the customers.

A new subsidiary-Mercantile Bank Securities Ltd- will also begin its operation to strengthen the capital market services offered by the bank.

Besides, one new 'exchange houses' will be opened in Birmingham to boost the remittance business of the bank. Permission for opening two more exchange houses outside the country is under process.

The bank has drawing arrangement with 20 exchange houses in 7 countries of the world, out of which Western Union and Express Money have global presence.

"We have achieved 34 per cent growth in our operating profit till October, 2010 against the corresponding period of 2009," Mr Shahidul mentioned.

Similarly deposit, loan, import and export business of the bank registered significant growth during the same period.

"We have introduced policy and guidelines in every aspect of banking activities including initiatives to ensure sustainable and profitable business growth through development, acquisition and retention of potential human resources and high yielding customers by institutionalizing relationship banking across the Bank through building a team of dedicated, efficient and professional workforce; harnessing their core competence with good business practices to remain ahead of others," he said.

The Bank is building capacity of manpower of different tiers by enhancing level of competencies and job knowledge and uplift employees morale and loyalty by motivation and training through the best HRM practices that fully utilizes performance-based compensation scheme.

Regarding the compliance of Bangladesh Bank directive on raising paid-up capital to Tk 4.0 billion by 2011, the managing director said that Mercantile Bank has already achieved the same in 2010.

Commenting on the critical challenges of the banking sector, the MD said implementation of Basel-Two remains a major area in this regard.

"The supervisory review process under Basel-Two is being strengthened in line with our bank's efforts to face the core challenges of the banking sector," the Mercantile Bank chief executive said.

Mercantile Bank is one of the best performers in CSR activities also.

Source: The Financial Express, Bangladesh/12th Dec 2010