The aim of financial inclusion so far has been to reach out to unbanked rural areas of the country and offer banking facilities there. But financial inclusion also has huge scope in the urban segment too, informed a report by McKinsey & Company.

The study says that by the year 2015, there will be around 45 million urban families having annual income less than Rs 2 lakh thereby making financial inclusion a vital necessity then.

Majority of this segment would comprise of Tier I, II and III households and lending opportunity of banks would thus be around Rs 1 lakh crore by 2015 from here only.

"This would represent a healthy mix of housing loans, personal consumption loans and micro-enterprise loans." Consequently, there would also be opportunities in insurance, deposits and remittances. If the cost of acquiring new customers is kept low, financial service providers have a potential revenue opportunity of Rs 14,000 crore to Rs 15,000 crore. If banks manage to lower their cost of acquisition, they can use the savings to offset delinquencies, if any," Mr N. Seshadri, Executive Director, Bank of India quoted.