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NT Bureau
Chennai, May 22:
 

Union Bank of India, general manager P Y Nagar addressing a press meet in Chennai yesterday. Also see is deputy general manager M P Varghese.

        In its customer-centric approach towards designing products, services and procedures, Union Bank of India (UBI) has repackaged its existing 'Union Classic Current Account (UCCA)' and has relaunched it. This product will be available to customers from 1 June, 2007 at 200 branches.

        Detailing about UCCA during a press briefing yesterday, General Manager P Y Nagar said that the product offers the customer a wide range of concessions and services. Under this, the account holder becomes entitled to these benefits based on an average monthly balance to be maintained by him. These balances can range from Rs 50,000 to Rs 10 lakh. Major benefits are that remittances, collection of cheques are all carried out for the customers free of charge.

        The amount of benefits will vary with the size of the balances maintained. For this purpose, accounts are classified into four categories based on the balances maintained.

        By opening the new account, the facilities can be enjoyed by the customer in any of his accounts like savings, cash credit, overdraft, packing credit. Besides, technology manages the customers funds by ensuring through a sweep facility that cheques issued by the customer are honoured by automatic transfer from any of his accounts from branches across the country.

        Moreover, the account holder of the Union Classic Current Account (UCCA) enjoys the advantage of conducting his transactions with ease, accuracy and speed. UCCA facilitates better management of funds, reduction in operation costs which ultimately results in increased profits for the account holder.

        On its upcountry presence, he said that the bank opened its first representative office at Shanghai in China recently. The office was declared open by Vishnu Prakash, Consul General of India at Shanghai in the presence of M V Nair, chairman and managing director, Union Bank of India and other luminariers.

        Significantly, the representative office will primarily carry out a liaison function that will facilitate trade and business opportunities between India and China. It would provide consultation and offer market information services to Chinese industrialists and entrepreneurs aiming to establish their businesses in India and vice versa. And the office will be headed by R S Pandey, an executive of Union Bank of India, who will work closely in developing relationships with Banks in China. Besides, it would also offfer information support Chinese business entreprenuers to set up business relationships with Indian counterparts.

        Interestingly, the bank has received approval from RBI for opening branches at Hong Kong and Doha and representative offices at Beijing and Guangdong in China and in the UAE.

        On future plans, deputy general manager M P Varghese said that the bank aims to reach a business mix of Rs 1,85,000 crore by the end of March 2008, a growth of 25 per cent.

        It has also planned to aggressively market technology-based products targeting youth and mass affluent groups, he said adding that 125 branches and 500 ATMs will be added in the coming year.

        He said that about 700 branches would be added to CBS network thus increasing the total number of branches covered under the core banking solution to 1700.

        Shedding light on the bank's presence, he said UBI's operating profit for the quarter grew to Rs 758 crore as against Rs 420 crore registering a growth of 80.48 per cent. The net interest margin for the quarter improved to 3.52 per cent as against 2.80 per cent in the same quarter last fiscal.