The RBI on Tuesday granted license to the consortium of Centrum Financial Services and BharatPe to set up a small finance bank, four months after giving in-principle approval. The tie-up has shown interest in taking over the troubled Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank.
Mumbai . The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday granted license to the consortium of Centrum Financial Services and BharatPe to set up a small finance bank, four months after it gave in-principle approval.
The tie-up has shown interest in taking over the troubled Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank. The Reserve Bank had in June given in-principle approval for grant of SFB license to PMC Bank after the consortium showed interest in acquiring it.
Centrum and BharatPe said in a joint statement that they received the final approval of RBI earlier in the day. The central bank has given banking license for the first time in six years.
BharatPe said earlier in the day that former SBI executive Rajnish Kumar is joining its board as chairman and will act as its mentor to form the SFB.
The name will be Unity. The name of the new small finance bank will be Unity Small Finance Bank. Unity as a name is important to both Centrum and BharatPe in many ways. This is the first time that two partners are coming together equally to form a bank. The MSME and micro finance businesses of Centrum will be merged with Unity Small Finance Bank, the statement said.
Jaspal Bindra, Executive Chairman, Centrum Group said, “We are delighted to have received the license and are excited to partner with BharatPe to build this new age bank with a strong team. We aspire to be the first digital bank of India.
India’s first truly digital bank to be built Ashneer Grover, Co-Founder and Managing Director of BharatPe said, I would like to thank RBI for handing over the integration of BharatPe and Centrum with the SFB license. We will work tirelessly and smartly to seize this opportunity and build India’s first truly digital bank.
Centrum-BharatPe has acquired this bank Let us tell you that Centrum-BharatPe has acquired the crisis-hit cooperative bank Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank (PMC Bank). Centrum and digital payment service provider startup company BharatPe are going to invest Rs 1,800 crore in this after getting approval from RBI.
Centrum Financial Services had proposed to acquire PMC Bank and form a small bank on February 1, 2021. PMC Bank was functioning under the administration of the Reserve Bank since September 2019. More than Rs 10,723 crore of depositors’ money is still stuck in this bank. Similarly, a total of Rs 6,500 crore of the bank’s loans are stuck in recovery, which have been declared as NPA.
