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OBC to hire 4,500 employees in three years


State-run Oriental Bank of Commerce will hire about 4,500 banking professionals in the next three years. OBC Chairman and Managing Director T Y Prabhu told ET that the new hiring would drive the bank's growth plan.

"We are looking at an average growth of 23 per cent both on credit and liability side. We plan to take our branch tally to 2,000 from the current 1,453 in the next three years. For this, we will be hiring about 1,500 people and opening 150 branches every year. A sizeable number of staff will be recruited for our rural agri business as we have strong presence in the rural belt of Rajasthan, Punjab and western Uttar Pradesh," he said.

The bank is targeting a business of Rs 2 lakh crore in this fiscal. It has achieved a business of Rs 1.89 lakh crore as of 31 December 2009 as against Rs 1.56 lakh crore last year.

It is now focusing on four prime areas to accelerate the business growth, viz, rural agri business, micro and small enterprises, mid and large corporates and retail loans. "Around 40 per cent of our business comes from the priority and agriculture sectors, 30 per cent from large corporate, 20 per cent from mid corporate and 10 per cent from retail. We want to scale up our retail business to 15 per cent in the next one and a half years," he said.

The bank is also examining the potential of opening an international branch. "At present, we have a representative office in Dubai. But for a full-fledged international branch operation, we are looking at countries such as Hong Kong, Singapore, the UK and the Middle East. The planning will take a couple of years to take shape," he said.

The bank is also planning to launch gift cards and mobile banking services by this fiscal. "The denomination of the gift card is still to be decided. But we expect the product to do well in the retail market," Mr Prabhu said.



courtesy: economic times