Oriental Bank of Commerce

Overview

type	Public
fate	Merged with Punjab National Bank
industry	Banking Financial services
successor	Punjab National Bank
founded	February 19, 1943 in Lahore, British India
founder	Rai Bahadur Sohan Lal
hq location city	Gurgaon
defunct	April 1, 2020
area served	India
key people	Mukesh Kumar Jain (MD & CEO)
products	Asset management Commercial banking Consumer banking Credit cards Investment banking Mortgages Pensions Private banking Retail banking
revenue	inr 178676900000
revenue year	2019
operating income	inr 37540000000
income year	2019
net income	inr 550000000
net income year	2019
assets	inr 2719095700000
assets year	2019
num employees	21,729
num employees year	March 2019
ratio	12.73% (2019)
hq location country	India
footnotes	‡R1R‡‡R2R‡‡R3R‡

Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC) was an Indian public sector bank headquartered at Gurgaon, Haryana. It had 2390 branches and 2625 ATMs across India. In April 2020, the bank along with United Bank of India was merged with Punjab National Bank, making the latter the second-largest public sector bank in India.[4]

History

Its earliest date of incorporation, per the Registrar of Companies is 1901.[5] Rai Bahadur Lala Sohan Lal, the first Chairman of the Bank, founded OBC in 1943 in Lahore. Within four years of its coming into existence, OBC had to face Partition. The bank had to close down its branches in the newly formed Pakistan and shift its registered office from Lahore to Amritsar. Lala Karam Chand Thapar, the then Chairman of the Bank, in a unique gesture honoured the commitments made to the depositors from Pakistan and paid every rupee to its departing customers.

Overview

The bank offers a wide range of banking products and services such as deposit accounts, loans, debit cards, credit cards (with tie-up with SBI), Insurance products, ATMs, Internet banking, Mobile Banking, Self-banking halls, call centre, etc.

The Bank has launched yet another people's participation in the planning process at grass root level essentially to tackle the maladies of poverty. The Grameen Projects venture aims to alleviate poverty plus identify the reasons responsible for the failure or success.

OBC is already implementing a Grameen Project in Dehradun District (UK) and Hanumangarh District (Rajasthan). Formulated on the pattern of the Bangladesh Grameen Bank, the Scheme has a unique feature of disbursing small loans ranging from ₹ 75 (~US$1.50) onwards. The beneficiaries of the Grameen Project are mostly women. The Bank is engaged in providing training to rural folk in using locally available raw material to produce pickles, jams etc. This has provided self-employment and augmented income levels thus reforming lives of rural folk and encouraging cottage industries in rural areas.

OBC launched yet another unique scheme christened 'The Comprehensive Village Development Programme' on the auspicious day of Baisakhi, 13 April 1997, at three villages in Punjab, namely Rurki Kalan (District. Sangrur), Raje Majra (District. Ropar) and Khaira Majha (District. Jaladhar) and two villages in Haryana, namely Khunga (District. Jind) and Narwal (District. Kaithal). The pilot launch was a great success. Emboldened by the success, Bank extended the programme to more villages. At present, it covers 15 villages: 10 in Punjab, 4 in Haryana and 1 in Rajasthan. The programme focuses on providing a comprehensive and integrated package providing rural finance to the villagers, with Village Development as its focus, thus contributing towards infrastructural development and augmentation of income for each farmer of the village. The Bank has implemented a 14-point action plan for strengthening of credit delivery to women and has designated 5 branches as specialised branches for women entrepreneurs.

Oriental Bank of Commerce

History

Amalgamation

Chairmen

Overview

External links

References