A Study on Banking Services Availed by Rural Customers

A recent empirical evidence highlight that access to basic financial services can make a substantial positive difference in improving poor people is lives. With only 50,000 of the 600,000 villages having access to finance, there is an imperative need toaccelerate branch expansion in rural areas. India has the highest number of households (145 million with 800 million people) excluded from banking. RBI and the government therefore plan to extend financial services to every nook and corner in the next five years. This is an uphill task by any standard. The level of banking exclusion varies across the countries and the world. However thereare group of people whoare affected by financial exclusion. The people who have low income, no source of regular income and who have a history of bad debts are excluded from availing the financial services and thus not considered in this study. In this background for improving access of banking services to the unbanked rural areas, Financial Inclusion has been identified as an instrument. Keeping this is mind the present study was undertaken during 2013 in Mandya district of Karnataka. Cent per cent of the respondents had opened savings account in the banks. Higher proportion (84.00%) of the respondents had availed loan facility. Of which, gold loan was availed by majority of the respondents (80.00%) followed by short term agricultural loan (55.00%). Majority of the respondents reported that infrastructure facilities in the bank should be improved.