Bank of Baroda, India’s international bank has emerged as the third largest bank in India. It has more than 3,400 interconnected, online branches in India and 85 offices in 26 countries, serving a whopping 39 million customers. It is the only Indian bank in the UAE offering a range of banking services to individuals, SMEs and corporate segments through its six branches and seven customer service centres.
To serve customers better, the bank is continuously introducing new products and services. It offers 8am to 8pm services at major branches. It offers online, instant remittance through ‘Rapid Funds2India’ to more than its 3,400 branches in India and to 60,000 branches of other banks in India. It has introduced ‘Friday Remittance Services’ (the only bank in the UAE to offer such services) and is accepting remittance instructions through fax. The bank has increased ATMs to 28. Some of the ATMs accept both cash and cheques.
For residents of the UAE, the bank continues to offer all kinds of loans such as car loans, personal loans, salary-linked loans, home loans for purchase of houses in the UAE as well as in India on the most competitive terms. The bank also offers various deposit products at attractive interest rates and wealth management services to individuals. Gold Lounge has been started at the Dubai branch and Shaikh Zayed Road for its high-net-worth customers.
The bank provides small and medium enterprises, and corporate clients a wide range of products backed by high quality service and relationship management, taking care of their financial and banking requirements. The bank has a specialised outfit, ‘SME Loan Factory’, to give sanctions in a time-bound manner. The bank has introduced SME Gold Card for taking care of their additional funding requirements. Through its large network, the bank is acting as a banking bridge between India and the UAE. It is actively facilitating growth of trade between the two countries as well as contributing to the Indo-UAE trade. Further, a large number of entrepreneurs are investing in the UAE and the bank is instrumental in channelising these investments by supporting the entrepreneurs not only from India but also from other parts of the world.
The bank wants to be the ‘Bank of First Choice’ for customers in the UAE. It plans to achieve this by providing them the best, by continuing to introduce new innovative products, solutions such as payment of bills/remittance to India through internet banking/SMS, debit cards/credit cards, increase ATMs to 40, starting biometric ATMs, creation of gold lounges for VIPs, and mobile banking, among others.
The bank also plans to further expand in the UAE by opening five more customer service centres at strategic locations such as Kalba and Hamariya Free Zone. It has a presence in Oman and Bahrain, and plans to increase its presence in these countries. Further, it plans to start operations in Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
