Business Correspondents are retail agents engaged by banks for providing banking services at locations other than a bank branch/ATM. BCs enable a bank to provide its limited range of banking services at low cost. They hence are instrumental in promoting financial inclusion.
BCs have to do a variety of functions viz, identification of borrowers, collection of small value deposit, disbursal of small value credit, recovery of principal / collection of interest, sale of micro insurance/ mutual fund products/ pension products/ other third party products and receipt and delivery of small value remittances/ other payment instruments, creating awareness about savings and other products, education and advice on managing money and debt counseling, etc.
What types of products can be provided by BCs?
As per the RBI guidelines the products provided by BCs are: Small Savings Accounts, Fixed Deposit and Recurring Deposit with low minimum deposits, Remittance to any BC customer, Micro Credit and General Insurance.
The BC model allows banks to provide door-step delivery of services especially ‘cash in - cash out’ transactions at a location much closer to the rural population, thus addressing the last-mile problem.
