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NT Bureau
Chennai, Nov 12:
 

        For the first time, two public sector banks—Bank of India and Union Bank of India—have joined hands with Infrastructure Development Finance Co Ltd (IDFC) for loan syndication.

        Announcing the arrangement in Mumbai recently, M Balachandran, chairman and managing director, Bank of India said that BoI and UBI, who have good number of common customers, would like to give single stop service to such customers to meet all their financial needs including arranging long term funds requi-rements for setting up new projects or expansion of existing facilities.

        M V Nair, chairman and managing director, Union Bank of India said that the banks have entered into a formal working arrangement to pool their skill sets to provide one stop solution to customers.

        Rajeev Lal, managing director, IDFC Ltd said that IDFC has vast experience in appraising large infrastructure projects whereas BoI and UBI have experience in appraising working capital finance apart from project financing. In these days of large project funding, pooling of skills of the three organisations will not only help handling the project finance requirements with speed, but also help these organisations to develop talents over a wide spectrum of industries.

        The arrangement will facilitate joint identification, marketing, appraisal and underwriting of project finance, which will provide a total solution to the promoters.

        At the same platform, both the banks announced a few more initiatives of working toge-ther. One such initiative is to offer Cash Manag-ement Services leveraging the tech-nology and branch network of each other. Both the banks are using the same IT platform. While BoI has implemented Core Banking Solution in 1008 branches covering more than 300 cities in 17 States, UBI has implem-ented CBS in 850 branches covering 241 cities in 22 States.

        Yet another area where the banks will joins hands is in international operations. BoI will be the preferred bank for UBI for their overseas operations. Commenting on the arrangement, Balachandran said that BoI is having a strong international presence with 24 offices in 12 countries and will be soon expanding its operations to 4 more countries. This extensive network will be made available to UBI for all their overseas operations including raising of resources. Meanwhile, both the banks are looking for working together in some more areas which are under discussion. The whole idea is to pool the limited and scarce resources/ expertise together so as to achieve benefits in terms of costs and improve delivery to the customers.