Bank of Baroda New Zealand’s Indian principal, Bank of Baroda, has been conferred upon Best Bank 2010 award by the prestigious financial magazine, Business India in recognition of its consistent performance.
The Bank has made remarkable progress in business performance and technology implementation, financial inclusion and international operations.
M.D. Mallya, Chairman & Managing Director of the Bank received the award at the hands of Kamal Nath, Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways in the presence of Ashok H Advani, the Publisher and Pheroza Bilimoria, Managing Director of Business India Group at a glittering function held at Mumbai.
Bank of Baroda has its corporate headquarters in Mumbai. The bank was founded in 1908 in Baroda by the Late Maharaja of Baroda, Sir Sayajirao Gaekwad III.
From its humble beginnings, the Bank has grown over the years, to emerge as an Indian financial powerhouse. It has a network of over 3100 branches in India across the length and breadth of the country. It has 78 overseas branches/foreign offices in 25 countries across 5 continents serving a Global customer base of over 39 million.
On September 1 last year, Bank of Baroda New Zealand became the country’s nineteenth banking company after receiving a licence to operate from the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
It has been operating from its 114 Dominion Road branch in Auckland since June 24 this year. “The support from the Indian diaspora in New Zealand has been encouraging and we are looking forward to stepping up our service offerings in the coming months,” Managing Director Mr Satish Vermani told Indian Weekender while sharing the news of the parent company’s recent prestigious award in India.
Growing in Fiji too
Bank of Baroda has experienced good progress in Fiji in line with the overall growth of the bank worldwide says Executive Director- Narasipur Srinath.
Srinath who is visiting Fiji from India for the bank’s 50th anniversary – says Baroda has over 70,000 customers in Fiji, and the bank is both retail and commercially focused.
He says the main objective now is to increase the bank’s clientele to ensure future growth.
“Bank of Baroda in Fiji is quiet good and in tune with the banks overall growth. It has shown a growth of in the past two and a half years of 80 to 90 per cent. In the banking industry any growth over 20 per cent is deemed as a good growth, hence I am extremely happy with the growth. In the days ahead, we want to increase the clientele base.”
Srinath and other bank executives from India will be meeting the government and other stakeholders before they return.