Union Bank of India

Forbes listed Union Bank of India or UBI as one of the top 2000 largest state run banks in India. The bank’s USD13.45 amounts in assets totally that it owns.

It is important to note that United Bank of India is confused with UBI because of its acronym. The bank was registered as a limited company in 1919 in November and it was Mahatma Gandhi inaugurated it.

However, 28 years later, UBI only had 4 branches through out India’s cities of Mumbai which had 3 branches and Saurashtra which had 1 branch.

Thereafter in the government nationalized the bank in 1975. In 1930, the private sector banking was established after UBI merged in Belgaum Bank following nationalization. Another major merger that that took place was 1985 where Miraj State Bank which was established in 1929 merged to UBI.

Thereafter at the request of the Reserve Bank of India, UBI acquired Sikkim Bank following non-scheduled bank and extensive irregularities discovered. The offer was attractive to UBI since Sikkim Bhand had eight branches spread all over the North-east part of India.

As early as the last decades of the 18th century, India had already started banking services. You will be surprised to find out that government-owned bank originated 1806 the State Bank of India is the oldest bank existing as the largest commercial bank in the country.

In 1935, the Reserve Bank of India took over the responsibility of central banking after relegating the responsibilities formally from the then Imperial bank of India to its commercial banking functions. The Reserve Bank was nationalized and given broader powers in 1947 after India’s Independence.

Some of the countries 14 largest commercial banks were nationalized by the government in 1969 and in 1980; the next six largest banks were nationalized by the same government.

India has 88 Scheduled commercial banks currently of which the public banking sector has 27 banks that the government of India is holding stake and those that the government doesn’t have stake are 31 in the private sector banking which may be listed and traded on the stock exchanges publicly and some other foreign banks totaling to 38.

Nationally there are 17,000 ATMs and 53,000 combination of banking network. The public sector banks have a total asset of over 75% of the banking industry while 6.25% and 18.2% of the private assets are held by foreign banks and private sector banks respectively.