in the bank since then. the question that confronted us was : how, when, by who and what should be done to change the status quo. it was clear that a strategic plan and modalities had to be developed to answer this question. and so the journey began. firstly, we developed a strategy driven by the executive level of the bank. an important element of that strategy was to talk through the issues with all management and staff about the imperative of transformation as an optimal human resources allocation issue and also as a contribution to the deracialisation of south africa. this was not an easy task and still is not an easy one. numerous strategy planning meetings to achieve a buy - in were and still are the order of the day. change is continuous though. we are always in a state of change. so the end - state is nothing but a brief moment to reflect. as some philosophers have said “ nothing is stable except stability ” i say “ joined ” because i do not want to claim that transformation only began in 1998. far from it. the fact that by that time there were some black mangers and females in the senior professional and assistant general management level is testimony to the fact that my predecessors had begun the journey. we accelerated the pace. secondly, management was tasked with the responsibility to indicate to the executive team 3 how and by when they could go about implementing a numerical target of 50 - 50 black / white ratio and a 33 % female representation at all occupational levels of the bank by 2005. this was the basic plan. the process was both fascinating and difficult. eventually we produced the plan. thirdly, it was an essential element that transformation was more than about employment equity numbers. it also involved changing the culture and the decision making processes in the bank. to that extent we sat down to create a committee or syndicate decisionmaking system. this forced people to engage in regular discussions and debates about the work of the bank around the same table or tables. examples in this regard are the monetary policy committee ( mpc ), the management committee ( manco ), financial stability committee, etc. these committees or syndicates brought together people from different departments to make collective decisions in order to advance the work of the bank. fourthly, the board of directors had to change too. in 1998, the board of directors was extremely unrepresentative with only four ( 4 ) black people out of a total of fourteen ( 14 ). the secretary of the board was also

the banks to make financial inclusion congruent with their business models. banks must view financial inclusion as a viable business model. ( iii ) banks must view financial inclusion as a huge business opportunity and perfect their delivery models. bc based delivery model has been made more flexible and inclusive. ( iv ) for effective implementation of the financial inclusion strategies, banks must fix technology aspects first including completion of core banking solution ( cbs ) in all their branches and those of sponsored rrbs, and seamless integration of front - end devices with the back - end systems. without this, it would not be possible to scale up the activities. ( v ) there is a need to increase the bouquet of products currently being offered. during discussions on their fips, banks have been advised to provide a minimum of four products to the account holder, viz : ( a ) a savings cum overdraft account ( b ) a pure savings account, ideally a recurring or variable recurring deposit ( c ) a remittance product to facilitate ebt and other remittances, and ( d ) entrepreneurial credit products like a general purpose credit card ( gcc ) or a kisan credit card ( kcc ) apart from these minimum basic products, banks can offer any other product like insurance, mutual funds, etc. to the account holders. ( vi ) on the issue of coverage, we have clarified that for a village to be considered covered by banking services, either a bank branch has to be present or a bc has to be visiting / present in that village. there must be a bifurcation between villages with more than 2000 population and those with less than 2000 population. the plan needs to cover in an integrated manner both categories of villages. the name of the bc / branch covering a particular village needs to be indicated on the banks website. ( vii ) special focus on financial inclusion at urban and metro centers through a functional approach. ( viii ) involve all the stakeholders in the process. governments, both central and state, ngos, technology vendors, industry associations, insurance and mutual fund companies, society at large. ( ix ) rbi ’ s efforts have been to remove all regulatory bottlenecks for facilitating greater financial inclusion. pricing has also been made free. myths about financial inclusion let me now come to a couple of myths surrounding financial inclusion and the first 12. of which is that banks are not willing to do greater financial inclusion. in reality, the truth is that without appropriate technology, they could not have done it