Central Bank to shut 600 branches by March 2023

Central Bank of India, plans to shut 13% of its branches to improve its financial health, which has been under pressure for several years, according to sources and a document seen by Reuters.

The bank is looking to reduce the number of branches by 600 by either shutting down or merging loss-making branches by the end of March 2023, according to the copy of a document reviewed by Reuters.

It is the most drastic step the lender has taken to improve its finances and will be followed by the sale of non-core assets such as real estate, said a government source who did not want to be named.

The closure of the branches has not been reported previously. The more than 100-year old lender currently has a network of 4,594 branches.

Central Bank along with a clutch of other lenders was placed under RBI’s prompt corrective action (PCA) in 2017 after the regulator found some state-run lenders were in breach of its rules on regulatory capital, bad loans and leverage ratios.