A Study on Universalisation of Selected Indian Private Public and Foreign sector banks

Abstract

A system where banks provide a wide variety of financial services, including investment and commercial services is known as Universal Banking. In European countries including Switzerland, Universal banking is very common. Financial services like asset management, credit, deposits, loans, payment processing, securities transactions, financial analysis and underwriting may be provided by universal banks. newlineServices of investment bank and commercial bank are combined together and offered by universal banks within one entity. Financial services provided by these banks may include a variety of investment services, insurance services and deposit accounts. newlineThe objectives of the current research are to rate the banks on the basis of universal banking score and understand the factors that influence the awareness and need level of universal banking services. A comparative analysis of usage of selected financial services is also undertaken as a part of the study. Service quality becomes a very important aspect of customer satisfaction. A customer satisfaction model based on banking services and banking aspects has also been proposed using structured equation model (SEM). newlineThe study covers the selected financial institutions for the survey. Recent developments happening in the Indian banking industry has been covered in the study. The analysis has been undertaken using descriptive and inferential research. Various statistical tools used for analysis are mean, median, mode, Anova, chi-square test and Tukey Post-hoc test. Data is collected using primary and secondary sources of data. A questionnaire is designed to collect the data from the respondents. The questionnaire administered to the respondents dealt with questions related to awareness and need level of financial services, usage pattern of e-banking services and service quality questions. The final questionnaire administered to the respondents was tested for internal consistency using Cronbach Alpha. The reliability coefficient was more than 0.7 for all the variables. It is found that many banks are not offering many universal banking services because of which their universal banking score is less. But, it is observed that they are slowly marching towards universalisation by offering those services. The awareness and need of universal banking services varies among different age groups of respondents and among respondents with different occupations. Respondents falling in age group of 30 years to 50 years are more aware as compared to people of other age group. The awareness and need of financial services is same across both the genders, all educational qualifications and different income slabs. newlineThe usage pattern of banking services differ with respect to gender, occupation and age group of respondents. Males are observed to be higher users as compared to their female counterparts. newline