Our Role
Development
Strategy
Design
Design
Smriti Bank is a 21 year old cooperative bank in a small town of Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh. In a space infamous for scams and fraud, we helped Smriti Bank earn, establish and consolidate stakeholder trust to deliver growth for the entire community.
The Challenge
Mandsaur is famous for its “black gold” i.e. poppy farming. The district headquarter might be small in population but is big on money. The annual banking business in the region is ~₹4000 Cr. Given the size of the market, the region is flocked by almost all public and private banks.
When we started working with Smriti Bank, the biggest challenge was trust. Around the same time many urban cooperative banks defaulted and the founders fled with public money. This created a big distrust on the cooperative banks in general. Our second challenge was that the bank belonged to a very influential political family. Contrary to what one would hope, this in no way worked in the brand’s favour.
Apart from large depositors and borrowers, the bank also had to work towards financial inclusion to reach out to daily depositors across the region. This was a great marketing and communication challenge.
THE SOLUTION
To establish the bank’s credibility, we positioned it as a legacy with a strong performance and partnership with people for over 21 years. This partnership extended to customers, employees as well as the community.
The new brand identity reflected the brand philosophy ‘Aao badhe saath-saath’ translated as – partnership for growth. As a people’s bank that invests in the growth of Mandsaur, Smriti Bank was positioned as a people’s or community’s bank. Branch and office spaces were given a complete facelift to look professional yet comforting.
For the clients, new products and services like solving a banking query within 7 minutes were launched to elevate the whole banking experience. The bank also promises higher dividends and lower interest rates as compared to other private banks and helps stakeholders enhance the quality of their life.
As a homegrown cooperative bank, Smriti Bank created new career and growth opportunities for the youth and invested in the further training of its employees.
THE RESULT
From the time we started working with Smriti Bank, it has grown in trust and has registered phenomenal growth YoY to become the fastest growing bank in Madhya Pradesh. It became the first cooperative bank in the state to get RBI’s permission to introduce financial inclusion. The bank was also awarded by ASSOCHEM for Social Banking.
Smriti Bank’s business has grown 10X from 75Cr. when we started to 800Cr. to date. The banks' customer base also grew 15X
Smriti Bank grew from a single branch to now 18 branches (8 operational and 10 sanctioned)
The bank is on its way to become a scheduled bank in the near future
