Last decade saw a host of new commercial banks. Some continue to be leading banks and some like the Global Trust bank faded away.
We were watching all the major development and credit institutions becoming commercial banks in the late 90s and early 2000. Among them were the development finance institution IDBI and the credit corporation ICICI.
While IDBI was instrumental in building National Stock Exchange of India (NSE), the National Securities Depository Services Ltd (NSDL) among a few others, ICICI was an initiative of the World Bank. These institutions changed roles to become commercial institutions as IDBI Bank and ICICI Bank to become premier banks later.
For this decade, a few more have lined up to become banks. RBI is likely to bring out the draft guidelines for new banking licences soon.
In the race are IL&FS, IDFC, IFCI, Reliance Capital, IndiaBulls, Religare and Aditya Birla Financial Services.
To quote from The Hindu Business Line:
At present, India has 26 public sector banks, seven new private sector banks, 15 old private sector banks, 31 foreign banks, 86 regional rural banks, four local area banks, 1,721 urban cooperative banks, 31 state cooperative banks and 371 district central cooperative banks.
