India's first public sector bank for women opens its doors today, powered by technology from US fintech vendor FIS.
On the birthday of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, her daughter-in-law Sonia Ghandi and current PM Manmohan Singh are opening the Bharatiya Mahila Bank's first branch in Mumbai's Air India building today.
The Indian government has committed around US$160 million in initial capital to the bank, which will focus on bringing financial services to India's under-served female population, although men can open accounts.
Bharatiya Mahila begins with just seven branches throughout the country but plans to increase this to 25 by March and 500 by 2017, many of them small mobile operations designed to serve rural areas.
Technology has been outsourced to FIS, which under a multi-year agreement will provide a core banking platform, trade finance and payments services, data centre management and branch technology infrastructure management.
Usha Ananthasubramanian, chairman and MD, Bharatiya Mahila Bank, says: "FIS was able to present us a high-quality technology solution with a model that could be operationalised in the shortest time frame and is easily scalable for our planned growth."