Public sector lender, Indian Bank is planning to widen its reach both in domestic and overseas arenas. The bank aims at doing so by increasing its branch network, number of ATMs and also hiring more than 1000 people, said a top official of the bank.

"We will be opening 195 new branches this year and set up 1,250 ATMs this year. We will also be hiring 1,000 employees this year. The bank also plans to increase its overseas presence by opening new branches in Jaffna and Kandy in Sri Lanka and Jakarta in Indonesia," T.M. Bhasin, chairman and managing director (CMD) said.

Talking about its plans in Sri Lanka, he said that the Government has agreed to lend Rs 1000 crore for rehabilitation of the internally displaced Tamils there and "in order to channel the assistance through our bank we are opening a branch in Jaffna".

'There is also good business potential in Kandy," he added.

The network of the bank currently consists of 1,764 branches, 41 extension counters, 20 satellite counters and 1,010 ATMs.

As on June 30, 2010 the bank's total income amounted to Rs.2,477.25 crore and net profit touched Rs.368.14 crore.

The net interest income rose by 25.6 percent on year on year basis to touch Rs.926.65 crore in the first quarter, said Bhasin.

"With revenue from treasury operations going down, we have moved sizeable funds for lending," Bhasin added.

"We are the first nationalised bank to generate NPA from core banking solution (CBS). The NPA is now monitored at the head office level under a general manager on a daily basis," he said.

"Though all the branches came under CBS in 2008, a lot of data had to be cleaned. The cleaned up NPA data is what we have declared now," he said.