Indian Bank initiates employees on merger with Allahabad Bank

Around 1200 employees attended a town hall meeting on Saturday in Chennai to mark Indian Bank and Allahabad Bank's amalgamation as part of the government's PSU bank merger move.

Finance Minister Niramala Sitharaman on August 30 announced the amalgamation of 10 public sector banks into four big banks bringing down the total number of Public Sector Banks in the country to 12.

The theme of the town hall meeting was ‘Bonding Together, Growing Stronger, Scaling Higher' and senior executives of both banks assured employees that the merger would be a beneficial one.

Padmaja Chunduru, MD & CEO, Indian Bank emphasised that Human Resources (HR) integration will be the main focus in the amalgamation process. She exhorted the employees to continue their focus on business growth and customer service during the transition period.

"The integration of HR to form a wider talent pool holds the promise of strong growth for the bank and greater exposure and better career prospects for the employees. The synergies would come from wider presence pan-India, economies of scale, higher investments in technology and improving productivity," she said.

She spoke about how employees should strive to give customers confidence and ensure service continuity through the transition period.

Mallikarjuna Rao, MD and CEO, Allahabad Bank, said large PSU banks were required for propelling economic growth to effectively 'thwart the challenges from the private players.'

"The combined entity will turn into a great bank for the future," he said. "Leaving a healthy PSU bank landscape for the younger generation of employees is our responsibility.”

The advantages of amalgamation were spoken about at length at the meeting. This is the first among more town hall meetings that will be organised at all important centres to get employees on-board with the amalgamation process, a statement from Indian Bank said.