New Delhi: State-owned Central Bank of India on Sunday clarified that was no decision yet on closing a large number of branches during the current financial year. However, the bank in a tweet added it is a routine practice to realign or shift branches.
"We hereby inform that there is no decision as of now to close a large number of branches during 2022-23," the bank tweeted responding to the media reports regarding closure of branches. The bank noted it is a routine exercise for every bank to realign, shift, merge, close or open branches on regular basis to achieve corporate business objectives.
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"We assure our esteemed customers and all other stakeholders that their interest is well protected," it added.
On May 6, news agency Reuters reported that the bank aims to shut 13 per cent of its branches to improve its financial health, which has been under pressure for several years, based on the sources and a document accessed by it.
Citing the copy of the document reviewed, the agency reported that the bank is looking to reduce the number of branches by 600 by either shutting down or merging loss-making branches by the end of March 2023.
The bank which is more than 100-year old has a network of 4,594 branches. Central Bank along with other lenders were put under RBI's prompt corrective action (PCA) in 2017 after the regulator discovered that certain state-run lenders were in breach of its rules on regulatory capital, bad loans and leverage ratios.
However, since then all the lenders except Central Bank have improved their financial health and come off RBI's PCA list, mentioned the report