The South Indian Bank Ltd. is one of the earliest banks in South India. The establishment of the bank was the fulfillment of the dreams of a group of enterprising men who joined together at Thrissur, a major town (now known as the Cultural Capital of Kerala), in the erstwhile State of Cochin to provide for the people a safe, efficient and service oriented repository of savings of the community on one hand and to free the business community from the clutches of greedy money lenders on the other by providing need based credit at reasonable rates of interest. Translating the vision of the founding fathers as its corporate mission, the bank has during its long sojourn been able to project itself as a vibrant, fast growing, service oriented and trend setting financial intermediary.

Business area of the Bank 

South Indian Bank is a publicly held banking company engaged in providing a wide range of banking and financial services including retail banking, corporate banking and treasury operations.

Products and services

• Personal Banking: Under this bank offers wide range of personal banking products and services such as deposit, saving, loans, internet banking, mobile banking, demat services, credit card, debit card, etc.
• The bank offers mutual funds products of various funds houses such as ICICI Prudential AMC, Franklin Templeton, TATA Mutual Fund, Sundaram BNP Paribas, UTI Mutual Funds, Reliance Mutual Funds, HSBC Investments, HDFC Mutual Fund, Fidelity Fund Management, Principal Mutual Funds, Fortis Investments, Birla Sun Life Asset Management Company and DSP BlackRock Mutual Funds.
• NRI banking: SIB also caters its banking products and services to NRI customers such as deposit, car loans, remittances, investment schemes, insurance are amongst others.
• Corporate banking: It provides wide range of products and services to corporates. SIB offers working capital finance, project finance, structured finance etc.

Awards & Accolades

2012-13

• SIB bags The IBA Banking Technology Awards 2012-13
  
• Sunday Standard Best Bankers -2013 Awards
  
• SIB bags The IBA Banking Technology Awards.

2014

• South Indian Bank wins 'Best IT Team Award'-Banking Technology Excellence Award.

2016

• South Indian Bank gets RBI nod to open representative office in Dubai.

2017-18

• Received  the    ‘Best  Bank  Award  for  Digital  Banking  among  Small  Banks’  and  ‘Best  Bank  Award  for  High  Performance  IT  Ecosystem  among  Small  Banks’  in  the  thirteenth  edition  of  the  IDRBT  Banking  Technology  Excellence Awards 2016-17.
  
• Won five technology awards during the Indian Banking Association (IBA) Technology Awards 2018.
  
• Won  the  Celent  Model  Bank  2018  Award  for  Trade  Finance and Supply Chain .

2018-19

• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Award instituted by Kerala Management Association (KMA) for Banks & NBFCs under Education Sector.
  
• Best Performing Primary Lending Institution of HUDCO under Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme from HUDCO.
  
• National Payments Excellence Award for RuPay instituted by NPCI.
  
• Best MSME Bank-Runner Up award instituted by Chamber of Indian Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises.
  
• Banking  Technology  2019  awards  instituted  by  IBA  -  The  Bank emerged winner in the ‘Most Customer Centric Bank Using  Technology’  category  and  runner  up  in  the  ‘Best  Payments Initiative’ category amongst small Banks’.

2019-2020

• Best MSME Bank (Private Sector) Award by ASSOCHAM in connection with 7th MSME National Excellence Awards-2019.
  
• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Excellence Award, 2019 instituted by Rotary District 3201 for carrying out CSR project in the area of Education for Underprivileged.
  
• IBA Awards in 6 categories -Best Technology Bank of the Year (Winner - Small Banks). Best Use of Data & Analytics for Business Outcome (Winner - Small Banks). Best IT Risk Management & Cyber Security Initiatives (Joint Winner - Small Banks). Best Payment Initiative (Joint Runner Up - Private Sector Banks). Most Customer Centric Bank using Technology (Small Banks). Best CIO - Runner Up.

Milestones

• 1908: Incorporation of the bank
• 1946: The FIRST among the private sector banks in Kerala to become a scheduled bank in 1946 under the RBI Act.
• 1992: The FIRST bank in the private sector in India to open a Currency Chest on behalf of the RBI in April 1992.
• 1992: The FIRST bank in Kerala to develop an in-house, a fully integrated branch automation software in addition to the in-house partial automation solution operational since 1992.
• 1992: The FIRST private sector bank to open a NRI branch in November 1992.
• 1993: The FIRST bank in the private sector to start an Industrial Finance Branch in March 1993.
• 1993: The FIRST among the private sector banks in Kerala to open an ‘Overseas Branch’ to cater exclusively to the export and import business in June 1993.
• 2014-15: ISO 27001 implementation for DC/DR and IT operations.
• 2014-15: Integrated CRM solution to help business users for better understanding of its customers.
• 2015-16: Issuance of MasterCard Titanium and issuance of Master Card World.
• 2015-16: Enabling e-commerce transactions in Rupay cards.
• 2016-17: Bank started issuing pre-paid instruments after taking approval from Reserve Bank of India.
• 2016-17: Bank received approval from RBI to open a representative office at Dubai in UAE.
• 2016-17: Bank received license from Reserve Bank of India for participating in Bharath Bill Payment System (BBPS) set up by NPCI.
• 2017-18: The Bank has started operations of Representative office at Dubai in UAE from 25.04.2018.
• 2017-18: The Bank has started instant account opening by biometric verification at branches.
• 2017-18: The Bank has started issuing ‘FASTAG’ to vehicles enabling Toll payments digitally without waiting at Toll Booths.
• 2017-18: The Bank has started ‘Bharat QR’ to enable merchants to accept payments digitally.
• 2018-19: Tied up with Bharti AXA as the third general Insurance partner which in turn will provide a better spread of products to customers as well as aid in significantly improving the other income.
• 2018-19: Introduced Merchant in a Box - Master card business debit card and Bharat QR is provided in a bundled offer to pre identified merchants free of cost.
• 2018-19: Launched Secured Credit Card - Secured Credit Card is a new product under the digital products catalogue, by which a Credit Card can be issued to Bank's retail customers who maintain a fixed deposit with the Bank. Unlike an unsecured Credit card issued based on the credibility of the applicant, Secured credit card is issued based on the Fixed deposit of the applicant, Lien-marked for the card.
• 2018-19: Introduced a new Savings Bank Account ‘SIB – RUBY’ with Best in Class Features and Higher Interest rate.
• 2019-20: Tied-up with Mirae Asset Mutual Fund and Motilal Oswal Mutual Funds, thereby giving more options for the customers to invest.
• 2019-20: Launched new GPRS POS Terminals (e-charge slip based Paytivo 6210).
• 2019-20: Introduced digitalized Term Deposit Advices in lieu of Term Deposit Receipts as part of extending digital services with the ‘Go Green’ concept in mind.
• 2019-20: Launched a new Retail Term Deposit product called “FD VANTAGE”. FD Vantage is a Term Deposit product in three variants like FD Vantage - Alpha, Beta & Gama clubbed with free insurance coverage.