Project Report

Title: Landscape of Retail Banking

Objective: To analyse Indian retail banking overview and its performance at Axis bank.

The project started off with a proper analysis of retail banking in India which included the
compounded growth rate percentage of the total lending and deposits. The fact that Indian
banking sector has been expanding rapidly, retail banking being one of the major growth
drivers adds significance to the project. India’s retail credit market is the fourth largest in the
emerging countries, comprising of 3% of retail market globally in 2017. The four largest
banks (consisting of Axis Bank, SBI bank, ICICI bank and HDFC bank) comprises of 76% of
retail loans in India. The total banking revenue increased by 8% in 2018 and its GDP
contribution is 12% in 2018.

The opportunities in retail banking are immense given the low penetration of household debt,
branch expansion, digitalisation, democratization of data and rural expansion. Coming to the
challenges, banks face the problem of hidden defection which is rampant. Rapid change in
technology, the fact that only 20% of rural population (which is 66% of Indian population)
has internet access and customers are channel agnostic.

After having covered the overview, the performance got featured. Retail banking is the bed
rock of Axis bank’s performance as it has been able to grow retail advances faster than the
industry’s growth rate, with significant dispersion in the mix over time. Retail fees still
remain a major revenue for the bank with notable increase in the retail deposits.

A few recommendations were taken into a deep discussion like expanding the unsecured
credit card portfolio expansion to its existing customers (cross-selling), promoting analytical
driven marketing, stricter profiling of customers to avoid frauds, expanding in tier-3 towns,
leveraging multiple delivery channels and improving agricultural credit.

During the two months, the project helped me to know the difference between various
segments of banking and its significance. Throughout, the experience was quite enriching and
changed my perspective towards the banking entirely.