Public sector lender, Vijaya Bank is planning to centralise the loan processing operations of two of its segments namely the retail and MSME portfolios. The bank has decided to do this in order to reduce the time taken presently in the loan sanctioning process.

"We would like to strengthen the credit delivery mechanism under the retail and SME segments. What we intend to do is build capabilities within the bank, so that our retail and MSME segment operations can be scaled up in a big way," Mr H.S. Upendra Kamath, CMD of the bank said.

The retail and MSME segments have booked growth of 8.2% and 22% respectively in the fiscal last ended.

"We would like to scale the retail portfolio up to at least 20 per cent in the current year, and the MSME advances to 30 per cent," he said.

He added that without proper infrastructure, "to expect a growth of 20 per cent of retail and 30 per cent of MSME will be far-fetched".

"The working of these centralised processing cells will be revisited and their scope expanded. We will ensure that they look at most of the retail parameterised loan products rather than only mortgage-based products," he said.

With reduction in turnaround time, "we want to ensure that housing loans are given a decision within six working days, educational loans within three working days, and vehicle loans within two working days", he said.