A Manimekhalai, MD & CEO of Union Bank of India (UBI), doesn’t want her bank to stay as the fifth largest public sector bank (PSB) in the country. She wants UBI to leapfrog to become the third largest PSB in the next couple of years. Along the way, UBI may even consider acquiring a Bank, she said in an interaction with BusinessLine. Manimekhalai, who took charge of UBI on June 3 as its first woman chief, emphasised that the Bank has set “RACE” — grow RAM (retail, agriculture and MSME) loans, improve Asset quality, increase CASA (current account, savings account deposits) and increase Earnings — as its goal for the year. Edited excerpts:

Q

Where do you see your bank in the next couple of years?

Acutally, I am looking at our bank being the third largest public sector bank (PSB) in the country. That is our collective aspiration. The aspiration that we have is “at least not stay in the same position as fifth largest PSB”.

Q

So, will you look at acquiring a bank?

Yes, I am open to that. Yesterday, I had mooted the idea with our leadership that we should be open to take another bank and amalgamate it with ourselves.

Q

Will the potential acquisition target be a public sector bank or a private sector bank?

There is no bar on that (PSB or a PvSB). We will be able to take anybody.

The same kind of amalgamation story happened in other PSBs — Canara Bank or Bank of Baroda or Punjab National Bank — about two years back. Everybody had the amalgamation pain, everybody went through the Covid stress…But they still grew. However, we were not able to grow….So, we can do something much better.

The market share of UBI is only 9.6 per cent of the total banking sector. So, there is a huge potential for growth.

Q

What are your long-term goals?

We want to be among the top three PSB lenders — be a market leader in select products and be among top three in Government-sponsored schemes.

….When I am talking about being among the top three PSBs, it is on the fundamental side — our profitability and Net Interest Margin should increase, non-performing asset ratios should decline, capital to risk-weighted assets ratio has to increase. These are the parameters that we are really looking at.

My only concern is that over the years, Union Bank has lost out somewhere. We will bring back the glory to our bank and see that it grows…We are all working towards that.

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