The public sector bank, United Bank of India, plans to increase its Current Accounts Savings Accounts (CASA) segment by opening accounts of state government employees. The decision has come as a means to hike the bank's customer base in low cost deposits segment. To put the plan into action, the bank has opened 120, 000 salary accounts of West Bengal state government employees.

Talking on the matter, Mr. Bhaskar Sen, chairman and managing director, United Bank of India said, "We are talking with the state governments of West Bengal, Tripura, Manipur and Assam and exploring opportunities in the salary account segment. It will help us to maintain our current account savings account (CASA) over 40 per cent."

It is reported that the Kolkata based bank has a consistent CASA deposit mix of about 40 percent for the previous eight quarters. Maintaining this consistency at a time when other banks have seen a reduction of about 3 to 6 percent in the said segment is quite challenging and so the bank had been exploring many avenues through which it could mobilize low cost deposits.

Sen added, "I don't see much of competition from other banks in this (government salary account) segment."