India's leading private sector lender, Axis Bank has aggressive plans to expand its branch network and advance its extension counters to branches in South India.

The bank has already upgraded some of its extension counters in the south zone that comprises of 4 states including Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.

Axis Bank has 181 branches in the South zone there were 17 extension counters in this zone initially. "The process of upgrading 13 of these to branches is over. We will upgrade the remaining ones before the end of this fiscal," said Mr C.P. Rangarajan, President (South Zone), Axis Bank.

For its branch expansion plans, a license to add another 55 branches in this zone has been received from the RBI. "We have firmed up 32 locations and these would become operational by March 2009," said Mr Rangarajan. In addition to the expansion plans, the bank also plans to increase its number of employees. "South zone comprises 3,700 employees. We will add about a thousand more in a year's time. We place graduates, hire off campus albeit selectively after a written test," he said, adding "career progression is matchless and the package on par with the industry."

Presently the bank is focusing to raise its customer base and increase its CASA (Current account Savings account) deposits. "Our CASA deposit at Rs 8,000 crore is about 52 percent of our deposit. Our CASA target for this fiscal is Rs 11,000 crore," he said.

Apart from the branches, the bank has a separate retail asset centre which handles home loan, personal loan and retail advances. This center is recording a growth of 5% to 6% every month and has an asset base of over Rs 100 crore. . "We are active on auto loan, home loan and personal loans," said Mr Rangarajan.

He informed that in the home loan front, "there is a lull now, but the year-on-year growth is 40 to 50 percent. We have close to 1,200 home loan customers in Coimbatore alone. We have done away with the pre-closure charges, but the customer retention rate is pretty high."

The bank has a customer base of about 30-lakh customers in the southern zone and it intends to add about one-lakh new customers every month.