Airtel Payments Bank to sell insurance, MF products

Kolkata: Airtel Payments Bank (APB) is planning to sell third party financial products to boost its revenue from other income category, an official said.

"As per RBI guidelines, we are not allowed to carry out lending activity. But we are allowed to sell third party financial products like other banks do", MD and CEO of APB Shahshi Arora said.

Starting operations few months ago, the bank had already opened 2.5 lakh banking points across the nation with a total customer base of two million spread across geographies.

"We plan to sell insurance and MF products through our network in near future. After that, we will also offer loan products of other entities like NBFCs as we are not allowed to do lending directly", he told reporters here today.

Payments banks were now required to park 75 percent of their total deposits in SLR securities and the balance 25 percent in other instruments as prescribed by the RBI.

He said that while charges were levied on cash withdrawals, other transactions were free of levies.