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When the bank started with its Financial Inclusion drive one the major stumbling block which the bank faced was the lack of knowledge and confidence of the huge unreached population about the financial services on offer and the formal financial institutions. The bank thus came out with a mandate to make the masses aware of the available services the benefits of those and the benefits of transacting through banks rather than informal institutions.
We concluded that the first step towards FI should be Financial Literacy which is a prerequisite to make FI meaningful and sustainable. Financial Literacy is to help the unreached sector realize the importance of financial services in improving the standard of their living and where and how the services can be availed, i.e. to basically create a need and synergize the demand thus created with the supply of financial services by the formal institutions.
Though the Village Knowledge Centres [VKCs] and bank branches were doing their bit to spread financial literacy, in order to expedite the process given its importance for the FI project the bank has planned to open 14 FLCC across its 14 lead districts to begin with to fulfill its mandate of financial literacy and counseling of the unreached and unbanked sector.
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