Marketing of Financial Products and Comparative Advantage of Southeast Bank Limited's Deposit schemes

Abstract

Southeast Bank Limited is a scheduled commercial bank in the private sector, which is focused on the established and emerging markets of Bangladesh. It was incorporated as a public limited company on March 12, 1995 and started commercial banking operation on May 25. 1995. SBL offers a full range of banking service and has twenty three branches throughout Bangladesh. The banks operations in Bangladesh are in the areas of business banking, retail banking, and ATM card service division. The bank offers a number of retail products in the form of loan/saving scheme as well as various types of trade financing facilities to its customer service and variety of products. At the same time, major weaknesses include lack of interdepartmental communication and storage facilities and centralized decision making prohibiting bottom-up communication. An industry analysis has been carried out to scan the macro environment which affects southeast bank limited’s operation in Bangladesh. A set of recommendations have been generated for further development and expansion of Southeast Bank Limited’s operation in Bangladesh. SBL performed well in marketing well in marketing its financial products. Southeast bank Limited is the first bank in the country to use VSAT at all its branches across the country. And thereby introduced the new product of “Real Time On-line Any branch Banking service” for cash withdrawals, deposits, electronic fund transfer, balance enquiry, accounts statements etc. By customers Southeast Bank Limited also launched a new product Islamic banking from selected branches of the bank at Sylhet, Cox’s Bazar and Chhagalnaiyh. SBL has also achieved tremendous success in deposit collection with in a short period of time. The growth rate in deposit is 31.42% compared to last year. This growth rate might be termed as remarkable achievement considering the volatile economic scenario of the country during the later part of 2002. Finally, a set of recommendations has been provided for overcoming the delinquency problem of SBL product marketing and deposit collection.