Business correspondents of different banks working in rural areas of State with educating people of financial products and offering most of them on demand at doorsteps could have never imagined the hospitality they started enjoying post demonetisation. But their almost negligible requirement before November 9 has taken a paradigm shift post the demonetisation announcement by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month.
Almost all of the banks have claimed that the earnings from day-to-day business of the Business Correspondents (BC) have grown up to anywhere between 15-25 per cent and beyond that in certain cases in value terms after demonetisation. “They were helping villagers in opening new bank accounts, providing some cash to existing ones from accounts and educating them about new financial products of the bank they represented. Beyond that, their overall day-to-day work was almost negligible,” said Jharkhand Gramin Bank Chairman Brij lal on Friday.
“However, now they have become one of the foremost ambassadors of cashless Jharkhand campaign. They have already won the confidence of customers by providing banking services at their doorsteps over the time. Hence, it is very easy for BCs to convince people that cashless transactions are not only safer, but also cost and time efficient in comparison to visiting bank branches. This has made BCs more desirable in the village than a postman,” added lal.
Business Correspondents came into existence as a tool of financial inclusion a couple of years ago. They were recruited by different banks on contractual basis on commission and were assigned to carry financial products to the farthest villages, especially in States like Jharkhand, Chhatisgarh and others where brick and mortar branches of banks remained unapproachable. In short, BCs were mini mobile banks for rural populace.
But post demonetisation, some 5,000 BCs of all the banks working in Jharkhand found their job and requirement taking another turn. After cash crunch at ATMs and banks, the customers from rural areas found BCs approaching them with facilities of cash deposit and exchange of old currencies of `1,000 and `500 denominations. They also became the only available resource in rural areas to enquire about e-wallets and to get one loaded in their phones.
“For a couple of initial days, our BCs were allowed to accept old currencies as deposit and exchange them too within permissible limits after following Know Your Customer (KYC) norms strictly. But exchange facility was taken away from BCs after Government got some BCs involved in illegally changing currencies. However, they are much in demand these days because they possess a special card from which amount to any bank account can be transferred. Moreover, banks are using them for strengthening their KYC norms, resulting in higher income for BCs,” said UCO Bank Zonal Manager RB Sahay.
“The good thing is that BCs are educating people about benefits of cashless transactions, and better thing is that people are listening to them due to already developed friendly relationship of BCs in their respective geographical areas,” said Punjab National Bank DGM PK Pradhan. However, he also threw light on difficulties that BCs started facing post demonetisation.
“After demonetisation, BCs couldn’t carry out the transactions below `2,000 due to shortage of lower denomination notes. At the same time, they remained vulnerable to robbers and anti-social elements, because BCs were the only people carrying new currency notes in farthest areas,” added Pradhan.
However, Roy said that banks remained concerned about the security of the cash BCs carried with them. “After our proposal to Central leadership, insurance of the cash with BCs have been accepted in principle. However, we are also planning to bring BCs under life insurance umbrella seeing the change of their role,” said Roy.