Ujjivan Small Finance Bank (SFB), owned by listed microfinance entity Ujjivan Financial Services, is planning to roll out several digital products and initiatives in the coming months, as it sets out to transform banking in smaller towns and villages.

Launched in 2015, Ujjivan SFB hired former head of digital initiates at HDFC Bank, Nitin Chugh, as its MD and CEO last December.

Besides Chugh, who will take over as the bank’s President in August, Ujjivan SFB has also appointed Sachin Bansal, co-founder of Flipkart, as an independent director. Both the appointments are significant in that they indicate the bank’s aspiration to be technologically more advanced than its peers.

“We will now be able to scale up our technology and innovations. Both Sachin and Nitin will bring new thinking on how to drive digital initiatives in achieving Ujjivan Bank’s mission of creating a state-of-the-art mass market bank,” the bank’s MD Samit Ghosh told BusinessLine .

The bank is reviving its all-digital personal loan portfolio, which was put on hold following regulatory challenges around the use of Aadhaar and issues related to e-KYC, said Ghosh. Besides, the bank is working on improving efficiency by accepting deposits digitally.

“Last year, about 23 per cent of the deposits came in through phone banking; this year we target about 50 per cent coming in through the digital route,” he said. The bank’s retail deposits grew to ₹2,736 crore this March, against ₹428 crore in March 2018. CASA also improved at 10.6 per cent in March 2019 from 3.7 per cent in March 2018.

New loan segments

The bank is also betting big on loan segments such as housing, personal and vehicle loans. It also wants to tap new customer bases including retailers, traders, micro and small enterprises (MSEs), senior citizens, salaried professionals and youth in both urban and rural markets. It is also revamping its microfinance business.

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