The first stage of the bottom-up consultative process designed to generate ideas and review performance of branches and their alignment with national priorities, was conducted at the Circle Office, Bhopal of Oriental Bank of Commerce on August 17 and 18, 2019, involving all branches within the Circle’s jurisdiction.

This was a first of its kind consultation where the branches were themselves asked to review their performance, deliberate on the issue before the banking sector, and ideate on future strategy and the way forward. The meet focused on the ways and means to increase credit to various sectors of the economy, enhance use of technology to bring about innovation and enable big data analytics, and make banking citizen-centric as well as more responsive to the needs and aspirations of senior citizens, farmers, small industrialists, entrepreneurs, youth, students and women.

The meet also reviewed the bank’s performance and its alignment with national priorities in areas such as –Credit support for economic growth, Infrastructure/industry, Farm sector and Blue economy, Jal Shakti, MSME sector and MUDRA loans, Education loans, Export credit, Green economy, Swachh Bharat, Financial inclusion and women empowerment, Direct benefit transfers, Less cash/digital economy, Ease of living, Alignment with local priorities, and Corporate social responsibility.

As a result of the consultations, a number of implementable and innovative suggestions came up on how PSBs in general, and our bank in particular, may improve their performance and what the roadmap for the future should be. These suggestions were collated and have been sent to the zonal level for further discussions at the SLBC/ State level, along with comparative performance assessment of the branches under each Circle.