Indian Bank - WikiHQ

Indian Bank is an Indian public sector bank, established in 1907 and headquartered in Chennai. Since 1969, the Government of India has owned the bank. It is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Financial Services within the Ministry of Finance.

It has 40,161 employees, 6,001 branches with 5,657 ATMs and Cash deposit machines. It has overseas branches in Colombo and Singapore including foreign currency banking units in Colombo and Jaffna. It has 227 overseas correspondent banks in 75 countries. Allahabad Bank merged with Indian Bank on 1 April 2020, making it the seventh largest bank in India.

History

Early formation and expansion

In the last quarter of 1906, Madras (now Chennai) was hit by the worst financial crisis the city was ever to suffer. Of the three best-known British commercial names in 19th-century Madras, one crashed; a second had to be resurrected by a distress sale; and the third had to be bailed out by a benevolent benefactor. Arbuthnot & Co, which failed, was considered the soundest of the three. Parry's (now EID Parry), may have been the earliest of them, and Binny and Co.'s founders may have had the oldest associations with Madras, but it was Arbuthnot, established in 1810s, that was the city's strongest commercial organisation in the 19th century. A key figure in the bankruptcy case for Arbuthnot's was the Madras lawyer, V. Krishnaswamy Iyer who founded the Indian Bank, which was an offshoot of nationalistic fervour and the Swadeshi movement, when the then British Arbuthnot Bank collapsed and the Indian Bank emerged. Mr V. Krishnaswamy Iyer solicited the support of the Nagarathar Chettiars authored by Mr. Ramasamy Chettiar, who was Annamalai Chettiar's elder brother. Sri V. Krishnaswamy Iyer and Mr. Ramasamy Chettiar were one of the first directors of Indian Bank. Later on, in 1915, Mr. Annamalai Chettiar was inducted into the board of the Indian Bank. It commenced operations on 15 August 1907, with its head office in Parry's Building, Parry Corner, Madras.

In 1932 IB opened a branch in Colombo. It opened its second branch in Ceylon in 1935 at Jaffna, but closed it in 1939.

Post Independence of India

thumb|upright=1.1|A 2017 stamp dedicated to the 111th anniversary of Indian Bank

thumb|upright=1.1|A branch of Indian Bank at Chettipet in Pondicherry

After the war, in 1947, it reopened its branch in Colombo.

International expansion resumed in 1978 with IB becoming a technical adviser to PT Bank Rama in Indonesia, the result of the merger of PT Bank Masyarakat and PT Bank Ramayana. Two years later, IB, Bank of Baroda, and Union Bank of India established IUB International Finance, a licensed deposit taker in Hong Kong. Each of the three banks took an equal share in the joint venture; IB's Chairman became the first Chairman of IUB International Finance. In May 1980s, IB also opened a foreign currency unit at its branch in Colombo.

In 1981 IB set up its first Regional Rural Bank, Sri Venkateswara Grameena Bank, in Chittoor.

In 1990, Indian Bank rescued Bank of Tanjore (Bank of Thanjavur; est. 1901), with its 157 branches, based in Tamil Nadu.

A multi-crore scam was exposed in 1992, when then chairman M. Gopalakrishnan lent 13 billion to small corporates and exporters from the south, which the borrowers never repaid.

Bank of Baroda bought out its partners in IUB International Finance in Hong Kong in 1998. Apparently this was a response to regulatory changes following Hong Kong's reversion to Chinese control. IUB became Bank of Baroda (Hong Kong), a restricted licence bank.

In June 2015, business of the bank crossed the milestone target of .

Amalgamation

On 30 August, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that Allahabad Bank would be merged with Indian bank. The proposed merger would create the seventh largest public sector bank in the country with assets of . The Union Cabinet approved the merger on 4 March 2020. Indian Bank assumed control of Allahabad Bank on 1 April, 2020.

Key Milestones

1907- The bank was incorporated on 5 March 1907, under the Indian Companies Act, 1882, as "Indian Bank Limited" and commenced operations on 15 August 1907.

1932 - The bank opened its Colombo branch.

1941 - The bank opened its Singapore branch

1962: The bank acquired the Rayalaseema Bank, the Bank of Alagapuri, the Salem Bank, the Mannargudi Bank and the Trichy United Bank

1969 - The bank was nationalized. It was appointed as the lead bank for nine districts in the States of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala and the Union Territory of Pondicherry.

1970: The Head Office of the bank was shifted to its own building

1981 - The first regional rural bank sponsored by the bank, Sri Venkateswara Grameena Bank, was founded

1989: - Indian Bank Merchant Banking Services was incorporated as a subsidiary he kan0; Bank of Thanjavur Limited (with 157 branches) was amalgamated

1991 - India Bank Housing Limited was incorporated as a subsidiary

1994 - India fund Management Limited was established to manage the operations of Indian Bank Mutual Fund

2006-07 - The bank entered into a strategic alliance with Oriental Bank of Commerce and Corporation Bank

2012: Scheme of Amalgamation of M/s India Fund Management Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the bank with Indian Bank.

2020: - 1 April 2022, Indian Bank and Allahabad Bank merged. The oldest Joints Stock Bank in the country, Allahabad Bank, was founded on April 24 1865 by a group of Europeans at Allahabad, at a juncture when organized industries, trade and banking were taking shape in India. Thus, the history of the bank now spreads over three centuries.

Indian banks set the growth of personal loans: In India, the growth of personal loans is rapidly increasing, as per the report, and the new plan for the highest growth in the personal loan sector was set by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Regional Rural Bank

It sponsores two RRBs namely

Puducherry Grama Bank
Tamil Nadu Grama Bank

References

Cited sources

External links

Indian Bank's official website