Internship Diaries #38

Karishma Manik

Central Bank of India

I was fortunate enough to do my Summer Internship from Central Bank of India, which is one of the oldest and largest commercial banks in India.

Central Bank of India was established in year 1911 and was the first Indian Commercial bank which was wholly owned and managed by Indians. Working with such a historic and renowned organisation was a huge learning experience. My objective during the internship was to understand the whole concept of “Customer Intelligence and Bank Marketing”.

My work was mainly to understand how Marketing Strategies are made and carried out in the bank to provide excellent customer experience and overall profit to the bank. I worked as a part of the Regional Marketing Team at the Regional Office of Delhi (North). The main objectives of the Team were to co-ordinate with the Zonal Marketing Team and the Branches under its jurisdiction for various marketing activities and Business Development.

During my tenure, I worked on various assignments in the Marketing Department. First one was the Customer Intelligence exercise, where I worked on determining top 50 customers under Current, Savings and Advances portfolio for each Branch; and top 100 Customers under Advances and Savings portfolio for the entire North Delhi Region. This was done to understand the Branch portfolio and clientele. Also, I along with another Intern, worked on the “Family Tree” concept where we worked on the strategy for getting business from these customer’s relatives, friends, acquaintances etc.

Then, I worked on identifying the weak branches of the region by assessing their growth during the quarter and worked on strategies for their Business Development. During this, I performed Mapping of ‘A’ rated Universities/colleges/Institutions in the region with their nearby branches so that they can act as nodal branches for providing education loan to students of these institutes so that students getting admission to these institutions are able to avail the education loan in a hassle free manner in the current academic year. A similar Mapping exercise was performed for Government Institutions as well, in which I worked on identifying 120 Central/State Government Offices and PSUs across Delhi, and prepared a report consisting of the existing business canvassed by different branches with these Government Institutes as well as the strategy for forming new business alliance with these institutes.

In addition to this, I worked on developing Publicity Campaigns for Marketing of Retail Lending Schemes and PM Social Security Schemes; and I also got an opportunity to organise different marketing events like Townhall Meeting, Marketing Executive Meet and Customers Meet for the Bank.

I was lucky enough to have a wonderful mentor whose encouragement, guidance and support enabled me to learn the nitty-gritty’s of Marketing as well as the entire Banking Industry. Also, the excellent working environment and group commitment of the Bank made my internship experience worthwhile.