Financial Inclusion by Bank Asia through “Agent Banking”

Abstract

Bank Asia Limited started its services with a vision to serve people with modern and innovative banking products and services at affordable charge. Bank Asia has been launched by a group of successful entrepreneurs with recognized standing in the society. It set milestone by acquiring the business operation of the bank of Nova Scotia in Dhaka. To connect the geographically dispersed population, Bank Asia has started Agent Banking recently through Bank’s Authorized agent. Bank Asia is the pioneer in agent banking in Bangladesh. This success has given the confidence to expand the project all over Bangladesh. This report focused the topics “Financial Inclusion by Bank Asia through “Agent banking” as agent banking is increasingly utilized as important distribution channels for financial inclusion. Bank Asia successfully implemented agent banking piloting phase in Munshiganj district. Within short time, more than 1330 agent banking outlet is opened. Bank Asia here collected different types of banking services like deposit, withdrawal, remittance, utility payment, government payment under social safety net purpose and small loans. All transactions are real time and authenticated with modern bio-metric devices. With the aim of agent banking implementation, Bank Asia will cover 64 districts, 285 upazillas where 5 million account holder will avail banking services through 1500+ agent outlet by 2017.To achieve the goal the project takes specific objectives with precise target and time frame.