City Union Bank unveils digital initiatives to take on peers

City Union Bank (CUB) implements digital initiatives, hires experts, and targets MSMEs to compete with peers in banking sector.

The 120-year-old City Union Bank Ltd. (CUB) has changed gears and initiated several steps such as the introduction of digital-lending processes for MSMEs, adding new verticals and hiring experts to keep pace with its peers, said a top executive.

“Our policy so far has been that we were focusing only for the creation of business assets. So, we had to make some fundamental changes,” said Managing Director & CEO N. Kamakodi in an interaction.

To start with, CUB has implemented digital initiatives such as instant loans for MSME and retail secured (housing loans, affordable home loans, loan against property and auto loan).

Loans of ₹5 crore—₹7.50 crore are given to MSME within 24-48 hours of turnaround time. As of March 2024, MSME and agriculture accounted for 56% of loan book.

“We have also established the sales vertical for our core advances growth, which we had not done in the past. We have also started building the team for the retail secured vertical from the housing loan and LAP,” he said.

To compete with its peers, the private sector bank recently, recruited about 10 executives in the rank of AGM and above to strengthen its capabilities in retail, analytics, credit and operations.

“With all the new digital initiatives together with the strengthened top and senior level management, we could see visibility on growth front going forward,” he said.