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00:00 If you take it in slices of time, the first five, the next and the next, I think the nature
00:06 of how Indian banking and how regulations in banking have evolved have been fascinating.
00:13 And we've seen it.
00:14 Second, we all know technology is driving change, the distance between technology and
00:22 banking is narrowing or where one ends, the other begins.
00:25 It's now we're living it.
00:26 If you recall, in the early part of 2000, the decade starting 10, we used to say technology
00:31 will dominate.
00:32 Now I think it's become real.
00:35 So between comparative forces, emergence of new technology and invasion of technology
00:45 into banking, regulatory changes that are at times ahead of some of the changes and/or
00:55 keeping pace, a lot has changed.
00:57 What I can say, and I think the bank has come out well through all these phases.
01:03 And if there's one thing we take great pride in is we've been fairly scratchless in these
01:09 years and come out without doing things that have changed, have happened without disturbing
01:18 the furniture, so to say.
01:19 So in some ways, I feel relieved that we are recognized for being a bank that's credible,
01:25 consistent, and growing.
01:27 And I believe that this will be our platform and our calling card for greater success.
01:33 So yeah, I'd like to believe we've made good progress.
01:36 In an era of some cowboys out there, you've been true to the banker name tag.
01:42 I just want to bring the focus on Federal Bank as an institution now.
01:47 So what was originally a more old generation regional bank, today, of course, is a pan-India
01:54 lender.
01:55 Most of your business comes from outside of Kerala.
01:57 I wanted to understand from you in terms of the way the business has expanded, what has
02:04 been a focus strategy for you, at least over the last couple of years, where the world
02:10 has come out of COVID and things are starting to look a little better now?
02:15 I think to understand that, we have to go back to what our roots are.
02:19 We have been traditionally very strong on NR and SME, small business lending, small
02:26 and medium sized businesses.
02:28 That has been the core.
02:31 And because of that, we've been deposit rich, and we've done well.
02:36 So through our expansion phase, we always believed that we must preserve this.
02:43 And this inherent skill of the bank, we can carry across the country.
02:49 So if you broadly map the world of remittances or world of NR money coming into India, principally,
02:55 it was Middle East Kerala.
02:57 And in that corridor, we dominated a large share.
03:00 That was and hopefully is our strength yet.
03:05 But we realized that the non Middle East, non Kerala, Middle East, non Kerala, and any
03:13 part of that quadrant are all growing quite nicely.
03:17 And therefore, we positioned ourselves in our expansion into geographies where NR is
03:23 remittances are and deposits are a large part.
03:25 So if you take Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka, parts of North, this is where the bulk of
03:31 the remittances ex Kerala comes into India.
03:34 So we created our catchment in these geographies.
03:39 So the last many years now we are, you know, 1500 branches, about 900 branches are non
03:45 Kerala.
03:46 And these are all in these geographies.
03:47 In most of these states, Tamil Nadu, we have 250 branches now and the other states have
03:52 about 150 plus minus.
03:55 So these have become our conduit for getting non resident.
03:59 So the core strength of Federal Bank moved into these geographies.
04:01 [Music]