Bank of Baroda to open six mid-corporate branches in FY24

Bank of Baroda (BoB) is planning to open six mid-corporate branches across the country in FY24 as part of its strategy to focus more on mid-corporate advances.

The public sector bank opened 15 mid-corporate branches in FY23 for quick processing of corporate proposals and tap opportunities available in the segment, as per the Bank’s latest annual report.

Mid-corporate branches usually meet loan requirements of companies up to ₹100 crore.

The bank now has four mid-corporate clusters at strategic locations — New Delhi (North), Chennai (South), Mumbai (West), and Kolkata (East).

Corporate credit portfolio

Corporate credit in BoB is serviced through 30 specialised Corporate Financial Services (CFS) & Mid Corporate branches (MCB), which manage approximately 90 per cent of the total standard corporate credit portfolio of the Bank.

The corporate credit portfolio of the bank increased to ₹3,40,408 crore as on March 31, 2023, up 13.2 per cent over the March 31, 2022, level of ₹3,00,693 crore.

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“The corporate segment, which had seen relatively tepid growth in the previous year too recovered smartly with a growth of 13.2 per cent, driven by the large capex push of the Government, improved capacity, and working capital utilisation,” said Sanjiv Chadha Managing Director and CEO

The bank said it is focussing on overall yield from the customer rather than interest income by offering ancillary services like supply chain finance, value chain finance, CMS (cash management service) facility, and other retail products.

With revamp in approach towards corporate credit delivery, the risk profile of the portfolio (of domestic advances of ₹50 crore and above) improved during FY23, with corporates with “A and above rating”, accounting for 86 per cent of the total portfolio in FY23 as against 78 per cent in the previous year, as per the report.

Bank of Baroda (BoB) opened new 73 domestic branches and merged 41 branches with existing branches during FY 2023, taking its total network of domestic branches to 8,200 as at March-end 2023.

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