Our young turks are our strength, we have a very young team: Mathew, Managing Director of South Indian Bank

Express writes of Mathew’s visions on banking in general and for SIB in particular.

Thrissur based South Indian Bank (SIB) will join the trillion rupee business club in the second quarter of 2016-17, and Managing Director V G Mathew will complete two years in office. Pramod Thomas writes of Mathew’s visions on banking in general and for SIB in particular.

Physics of banking

Mathew hails from Thalayolapparambu in Kottayam, but his academic journey is nowhere close to anything economic, doing his post graduation in Physics from University College in Thiruvananthapuram. However, he joined State Bank of India in 1978 as a probationary officer. eventually becoming Deputy CEO of SBI in Paris for four years. His journey with SIB began as Executive Vice President in January 2014 and on to MD and CEO on October 1, 2014. The career banker does find time to wind down, however, reading “serious books and literature”.

Vision for the bank

SIB will comfortably cross Rs 1 lakh crore business in the second quarter and is looking to double its business in four years. “Our vision is to turn into a strong retail bank in Kerala with significant presence all over the country. Our profit was Rs. 337 crore in 2015-16 and we want to accumulate a profit of Rs. 1000 crore by 2020. We will focus on MSME, agriculture, home loan, automobile loan, loan against property and gold loan to achieve this,” says Mathew.

Employees, the young turks

A crucial cog in Mathew’s dream are his employees, some of the youngest in the sector. “The average age of our staff is 34 years, very low compared to other banks. Many of them are in the 25-30 year age group. This gives us a great edge among other players,” Mathew smiles. All they need, he says, is training to be molded into better managers.

NPA, digital banking

On bad loans, he is aggressive. NPAs are mainly associated with large corporate accounts. “We are in the process of unleashing a war on NPAs and will shift focus to retail loans,” he asserts.  The bank has a net NPA of Rs 1652 crore and restructured assets of Rs. 945 crore. The bank is also forming a separate vertical for digital banking.

Future plans

SIB will raise Rs. 500 crore through tier-2 bonds during this financial year and has got shareholdre approval to increase the FII limit from 49 per cent to 59 per cent, only approval from the Foreign Investment Promotion Board remaining. It is also launching a credit card in association with SBI cards.

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