Despite facing challenges, Tamilnad Mercantile Bank (TMB) has exhibited an impressive performance and attained new heights, said Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
“Today, the Indian banking sector is stable after continuous prompt steps taken by the Central government. Many banks in the public sector have come back to normalcy now. At the same time, TMB, while facing similar problems, performed well and managed well and sailed through the sectoral problems,” she said while launching the centenary celebrations of TMB at Thoothukudi in southern Tamil Nadu.
“This is not a small achievement; there are many companies and organisations that have lost their path after years of existence. But, with an existence of 100 years in the banking sector, TMB has done extremely well,” she added.
The lender started as a small-level bank and has now spread its services to 26 States and 4 Union Territories.
“The bank, which started as a community bank in Thoothukudi, has spread across the country and reached new heights, she stated.
Highlighting the bank’s formative years and its contributions in the priority sector areas, Sitharaman acknowledged TMB’s efforts in digital banking, and urged to take it to the next level.
“The banking technology has reached great heights, even without opening branches in rural areas, through digitisation, you can offer banking services. So, the way forward for any bank, particularly TMB, is digitisation. Technology-related solutions take away a lot of other problems. Fintech is the biggest area, using which we are able to cross populate data. Auto population of data, which is available, can assess credit rating, and this is possible only with digitisation. I am sure that TMB management is thinking of greater digitisation to ease out the process of banking for the bank and the customers,” she added.
“TMB has always added value to all the stakeholders for the last 99-plus years. The bank has stood the test of time and seen various historical events such as independence, emergency, liberalisation of the economy and, most recently, the pandemic,” said KV Rama Moorthy, MD & CEO, TMB. He added that to help its borrowers overcome the adverse impact of Covid, the bank has covered 13,753 beneficiaries for ₹1,567.62 crore till date. In the era of digital banking, we were the first bank to introduce robotics in currency chest to sort and bundle currencies in order to provide quality service to the customers.
New initiatives
As a part of the centenary celebrations, the bank kickstarted multiple initiatives. Sitharaman launched a TMB ‘postal stamp’ and a specialised ‘postal card’. She also flagged off the ‘TMB Mobile DigiLobby’ vehicle, which helps customers withdraw and deposit cash and print passbooks at their doorsteps.