FINO reaches 2 million mark in just 4 months

B D Narayankar

FINANCIAL INFORMATION Network and Operations (FINO), a Mumbai-based biometric-enabled smartcard solutions provider, engaged in providing financial, non-financial products and services to the unbanked rural masses has completed two million enrollments of unbanked customers in India.

Since its inception, FINO has meticulously reached out to the non-banked sectors of the country and played a pivotal role in strengthening the banking radar of India.

FINO is rapidly growing; over two million households from the rural, semi urban and urban belt are currently getting benefits from the services offered with Axis Bank, Bank of Baroda, Corporation Bank, DGB, ICICI Bank, ING Vysya, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Punjab National Bank, Union Bank of India and other financial and government institutions.

On achieving the target of two million enrollments, Manish Khera, chief executive officer (CEO) FINO said, “We have issued more than 18 lakh cards so far. Enrolling customers at the rate of 20,000 per day, FINO crossed the two million mark in a period of just four months, after announcing its first million. One of the biggest challenges hampering growth in micro-banking industry is the huge amount of paperwork and human effort traditionally involved in supporting micro transactions and credit-scoring potential customers.”

“But FINO’s biometric card resolves these barriers to growth as this is one card that provides all solution. It not only helps end-users with an easy-to-use and highly secure mode of financial transactions, but also assists us to supervise transactions electronically. FINO continues to be hugely popular with customers. The introduction of new value-based services such as FINO-Saral has also contributed to the overall growth of the company. We are extremely honoured by the trust of our partners, the leading Indian banks and its International investors,” he added.

Founded in July 13, 2006, FINO today has an excellent network of nearly 1,500 agents all across, serving customers on the FINO architecture. Rishi Gupta, chief financial officer (CFO) and president (sales and marketing), FINO, said, “FINO is all about offering our customers innovative products and services. We are pleased with the progress we have made over the last two years. We are planning to issue more than four million cards by the end of March 2009.”

Technology upgradation is a priority to attract business opportunities. Hence, FINO has striven to successfully achieve ISO 9001-2000 certification by British Standards Institute (BSI).

Certified for the scope, ’design, development and supply of smart cards and systems’ by an authority like BSI will help attract investments nationally and internationally removing barriers for trade and establishing FINO as a company committed to high standards and continual improvement.

FINO, a multi-bank promoted company is a pioneering company providing cutting edge smart card based multi application solutions to ’unbanked’ in banking, microfinance, insurance and government sectors primarily located in rural and semi urban areas of India.

FINO ethos is becoming a sectoral venture for serving rural masses and helps other institutions contribute as per ’Financial Inclusion’ (FI) guidelines of Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

FINO executes end-to-end turnkey solutions for LFI’s including hardware/software, system integration, transaction network, operations, maintenance and training. FINO helps organisations improve efficiencies considerably by reducing overall project cost. In fact, FINO’s concept is to take banking and the banking technology to un-banked masses in the country.

Source: Meri News