Bank of baroda opens branch in Kawempe

 

Baroda Kawempe branch. Within a week, over 100

customers had opened accounts with the bank

 

By Ronald Kalyango

Kawempe, a suburb north of Kampala City, has diverse businesses, but very few financial institutions have tapped its potential. It is for this reason that Bank of Baroda decided to open a branch in this busy town.

The bank, on the highway to Gulu, is Baroda’s eighth branch in Uganda and the fourth in Kampala.
“I predict very huge business for the bank in Kawempe. We have moved around and the findings indicate that there are many companies employing between 50 to 100 people. These are people we shall attract to our bank,” says Humayun Kabir, the chief manager of Kawempe branch.

It has taken the bank 12 years to open new branches in Kampala, because expansion plans are decided by the managers at the bank’s head office in India. Kabir notes that kawempe is vibrant with a lot of small and medium-term businesses, implying that the demand for credit is very high.

The bank has been installed with closed-circuit television cameras as part of a comprehensive security plan to curb down thefts rampant in the banking sector.

“Competition in the banking industry is getting redefined day-in and day-out and the dynamics of competition are compelling us to concentrate more and more on modern and progressive customer-centric initiatives,” says Kamla Kant Shukla, the managing director of Bank of Baroda in Kampala.

 

He says Baroda is always at the forefront to ensure customer satisfaction through various innovations and customer centric strategies and approaches. Shukla says they have extended business hours by one hour and have introduced foreign exchange business at all branches.

He says recently, they launched the Flexi Recurring Deposit Scheme, the Centenary Term Deposit Scheme and Festival Deposit Scheme. he adds that many more customer products are also in the pipeline.
Shukla reveals that they were in advanced stages of extending their branch network to northern Uganda to tap the growing opportunities in the country.

“Branch expansion is part of our future plan and growth objective. We understand that investment is always involved with expansion plans. At the same time the organisation gets big dividends out of these prudent and timely investments, which increase the value for the stakeholders,” says Shukla.

He says in 2007 they decided to increase the number of branches to six and the districts they were looking at were Arua, Gulu, Lira and Mukono.

“We are targeting Lira first. I think this will be our first assignment in 2009. It takes time to have all the facilities in place but I am sure we shall achieve all our set targets,” Shukla explains.
The bank’s other branches are located in Jinja, Iganga, Mbale and Mbarara districts.

Shukla denies allegations that their main clientele were only Indians saying they had mixed customers and the majority were Ugandans who have supported the bank for the last 55 years. He says 80% of the bank’s deposits come from the local community.

Some of the asset products they offer include overdrafts, term loans, demand loans, business loans, education loans, salary loans, loan to pensioners and multipurpose loans.

Kabir says they had deployed marketing managers to traverse around the area to explain to the business and local communities about the bank’s services.

He says after this, within a week more than 100 people had opened different accounts with the bank.
“It has been a perfect time to come to Kawempe.

 

There is a lot of business going on here and the people will be saved time spent in the traffic jam travelling to Kampala for bank transactions,” observes Kabir.

The bank will be operating from 8:30am till 4:00pm and on Saturdays it will be open from 10:00am till 1:00pm. The minimum deposit for a savings account is sh50,000. Kabir says his target was to raise sh10b worth of deposits before 2009.