Udaipur’s premier cooperative bank, The Udaipur Urban Cooperative Bank Ltd (UUCB), brought home honors, securing the second position as India’s best cooperative bank, in the Rs 750-1000 Crore category.

Urban Bank stood tall among 500 nominees for the award from the 2000+ cooperative banks in India.  This award was given at the BANCO Conference held at Hotel Novotel, Hyderabad.

The award was given by the Dy Chief Minister of Telangana, Mohammad Mahmood Ali, in the presence of other dignitaries.  Quresh Tinwala and Qutub Sheikh received the award on behalf of UUCB.

Ending the financial year 2016-17 with an advances portfolio of Rs. 285 Crore and Deposits of Rs. 603 Crore, the 44 year old bank has come long way from its humble beginning in 1973, with just over 400 members and a minuscule advances portfolio of Rs. 2.8 lakh.  The membership strength now stands at over 6,500.  UUCB achieved a record profit of Rs. 8.92 Crore for the FY 2016-17 consolidated for its 14 branches across Udaipur, Salumber, Rajsamand and Fatehnagar.

Dedicating the award to the Banks loyal customers and staff, the CEO, Siraj Kathawala, in his statement to media said, “this achievement adds another feather in the cap for the bank, and added that it has received tremendous support from the cooperative society and cooperative regulators as well as the RBI across the four decades of its functioning.  Customers, even in the existing cut throat finance market, have stood loyally by the bank and the count is consistently growing.  With new technologies giving way to facilities for customers, the private and bigger public banks have taken to information technology at a faster pace as compared to the smaller banks, especially from the cooperative sector“.

However, he added, UUCB had implemented core banking systems (CBS) long ago, being one of the pioneers in the cooperative sector to do so.  In 2013, the bank became the fist cooperative bank in the region to open RTGS facilities for its clients.  Over the last few years, its foray into ATM oeprations, ATM and Debit Cards, implementation of mobile banking (IMPS) and with Internet Banking being implemented in the next few months, the CEO said that UUCB has not stalled any services or facilities implementation for lack of resources or approvals.

The Chairman of UUCB, Fida Husain Safy, in his statement said that the bank looks at providing state of the art facilities for its clients across the region and even to its NRI customers in the coming months.  New customized products, both for borrowers as well as depositors will go a long way in ensuring that the bank continues to grow and re-engineer its services.