Morung Express News
Dimapur | June 10
A one-day seminar on ‘Quality of banking services and its impact on customer satisfaction with special reference to Nagaland’, highlighted on the ignorance of vast majority of the population to the various services and schemes provided by banks.
The UGC sponsored seminar was organized by Public College of Commerce, Dimapur, in collaboration with State Bank of India (SBI) Regional Business Office, Dimapur, at Hotel Theja Fort on Friday.
Addressing the seminar, ADC Dimapur, Elizabeth Ngully, said though Dimapur is the major commercial district of the state with 57 bank branches, the highest among the districts in Nagaland, yet there are still many citizens who do not have a bank account mainly due ignorance or difficulties faced while opening bank accounts.
The ADC said majority of the population is still unaware of the facilities and schemes provided by the banks while some do not approach banks either because of fear psychosis or apprehension of depositing in banks.
On the other hand, Elizabeth also said most banks operate in Nagaland just to collect deposits and that they are customer-friendly only to the elite and successful businessmen or entrepreneurs. Banks have still not been successful in reaching out to the majority of the population and a lot of people have no idea as to how to avail loans. The only loan people are aware of is the car loan with a few people aware of personal or house building loans, she said.
“The banks don’t come forward in helping people in availing loans; even the subsidized loans given by the government to the beneficiaries cannot be availed”, she said and added the beneficiaries have to run from pillar to post to produce endless documents as demanded by banks.
In such a scenario, the ADC appealed to the banks to change their attitude and outlook and to take care of every individual as a customer regardless of their status. The ADC also reminded banks that to compete in the global industry, one must offer services that create customer satisfaction and that every customer is to be regarded as the most important factor in the banking industry and other industries as well. Banks must look from within and see whether they are equipped to meet the challenges of the economy, Elizabeth said.
Thought the banking network in the state of Nagaland is not as large and wide as in other parts of the country, records indicate that there is a steady growth in the functioning of this sector in the state. Out of the total 28 banks operating in the state, 17 are nationalized/public sector commercial banks, nine are national level private sector commercial banks, a state owned Co-Operative Bank and one regional Rural Bank. The state has a total of 161 bank branches, eleven regional rural banks and 21 co-operative banks. The area wise distribution of bank branches in the state is 106 in rural areas, 44 in semi-urban areas and eleven in the rural areas.
It is found that most of the banks and their branches in Nagaland are concentrated in the districts of Dimapur and Kohima. All the 28 banks operating in Nagaland are found to exist in Dimapur and 16 banks in Kohima. Out of the 161 bank branches in Nagaland, 92 branches i.e. 57.14% are found in these districts alone. Dimapur is the major commercial center with the highest number of bank branches (57) followed by Kohima (35) and Mokokchung (24).
This indicated the unavailability of proper and adequate banking facilities in the other eight districts and poor banking network. AGM SBI Dimapur Branch, Deboyjoti Dutta, also stressed on banks to improve the customer-friendly services.
