Media Release

Udupi, Dec 13: “Financial literacy counsellors have to bridge the gap between rural people and bank branches”, said M Mohan Reddy, general manager of Syndicate Bank. He inaugurated a one-day performance review meeting of financial literacy counsellors of Jnana Jyothi Financial Literacy Centres of Karnataka held recently at Syndicate Institute of Bank Management, Manipal. He further said, “Success of financial literacy depends on participation of bank branches. The FLCs being experienced officers of banks, have an important role to play in making them participate in the financial literacy programmes. Digital transactions being the need of the hour, FLCs have to train the people to adopt digital payment systems for banking transactions, with necessary follow up and assessment of impact.” He opined that ‘going digital’ may be tracked with rural youth to take it to villages. He called upon the FLCs to work with total commitment for achieving the objectives of the financial inclusion. 

Jnana Jyothi Financial Literacy and Credit Counselling Trust, sponsored by Syndicate Bank arranged a one-day Performance review programme for financial literacy
counsellors of 45 centres in Karnataka and two from Kerala in association with Syndicate Bank Institute of bank management.

The programme began with invocation by Suneetha Satheesh. K Raviraja, secretary of the Jnana Jyothi FLCC Trust welcomed the guests and participants. On this occasion outstanding performance awards 2016-17 instituted by the trust were distributed by the chief guest Mohan Reddy. The second and third prizes won by Beltangady and Tiptur centres respectively were received by the counsellors Usha Kamath and N Vivek. These prizes comprised of trophy, certificate and cash incentives. Individual prizes comprised of merit certificate and cash incentive, won by counsellors, Doddappa R Jyothi of Kustagi, Channappa D Hanji of Raibag, L B Patil of Jamkhandi, Basavaraj Indoor of Kalaghatagi, C V Dhananjayan of Kannur and R Sasidharan of Perumkadavila FLCs, were also distributed.

Sathish Kamath, general manager of Manipal zonal office of Syndicate Bank who graced the occasion as guest of honour in his speech called upon the FLCs to give more importance to teaching digital banking methods to the general public so that queue in bank branches is reduced for withdrawal, credit, transfer of funds and passbook entry. He wished the counsellors all success in their endeavour to spread financial literacy to each and every person of the society.

I N Raghavendra Bhat, managing trustee of the trust in his introductory speech gave a brief account of the performance of the trust during the year 2016-17 and the first half of 2017-18. He called upon the FLCs to adopt one village each in their operational areas on experimental basis to achieve 100% financial literacy so that every household has a bank account, RuPay Card and adopts digital transaction system. He also expected that during the year 2017-18 the 75 centres of the trust spread financial literacy to over one million people.

Usha Kamath and B Lathesh, counsellors of Beltangady FLC took up a session on 'Going Digital' for the participants with demonstration and power point presentation which was well received by the participants. After a review of the performance of individual centres, the award winning counsellors shared their experience and success stories, which inspired other participants also. The programme ended with a vote of thanks by Doddappa R Jyothi, Sr counsellor of Kustagi FLC.