Agent banking, which takes banking services to the unbanked people, is going from strength to strength, with both deposit collection and loan disbursement on the rise.
Lenders earlier kept their core focus on collecting deposits from clients through the new banking wing but they have given the same importance to loan disbursement and inward remittance.
As of September last year, loan disbursement through the agent banking channel was Tk 446 crore, which is more than double that from a year earlier. At the same time, deposit collection went up 142 per cent to Tk 7,517 crore, according to data from the central bank.
"The tremendous growth of agent banking proves that the underprivileged people are keen on banking services," said Md Arfan Ali, managing director of Bank Asia.
There remains huge scope for widening agent banking as lenders are yet to extend their traditional banking service to the large numbers of unbanked people.
