Neo bank + small finance bank

[A.Chatterjee]

I am fascinated with Neo Bank concept. Why not small finance banks merged the concept of Neo bank with them? They can grab huge rural or semi urban population and it will also help to promote digitization in rural and semi urban region. AU, Ujjivan etc. are top level small finance banks but due to their limited reach we can't reach to them. Payments Bank is almost similar to that what we want but the upper limit of 2 lakhs is irritating. Are not you consider RBI should permit such banks which are a combination of these three types of bank and stop classification rather promoting banking which is fully digitised and reach upto grassroot level.

 

[ShavirB]

Hi, it's not simple as it seems. Most of the NEO Banks (or atleast as much I'm aware) are primarily targeting customers from tier-1 cities. Nonetheless, we've witnesses cases where a Neo Bank has acquired a Small Finance Bank (Slice acquiring North East Small Finance Bank). From my understanding, this deal happened because Slice wanted to get a Banking license and acquiring a Small Finance Bank was the quickest way to get this license.