Three years after going in for a brand revamp with new colours and logos, Corporation Bank is ready for another one. This time, the bank is taking the help of management consultant, Boston Consultants, to improve its brand equity.

"We have launched a number of products and have even changed our corporate colour to green and yellow. We want to position our bank as a strong brand and hence have asked for the help of consultants" says bank's chairman and managing director, K.Cherian Varghese.

Branding has never been considered a serious issue in the Indian banking sector with very few banks focussing on branding their products. Most banks have preferred to name their products after the bank. Corporation Bank's home loan product, for instance, is branded as Corphome with very little branding effort. One of the exceptions in the industry was Suvidha, the retail savings product of Citi Bank, which can be labelled as a successful brand.

State-owned banks are discouraging retail customers from taking personal loans despite a slowdown in loan growth and abundant liquidity.

Higher provisioning norms on personal loans imposed by the central bank in January this year have prompted this move, according to bankers. Over the past few years, banks had seen a growth in personal loans, along with a rise in earnings of the organised workforce in a buoyant economy. However, once the Reserve Bank of India's norms on provisioning kicked in, banks had to set aside two percentage as standard provision on personal loans.

This means that for each personal loan of Rs 100 which is treated as a standard loan, banks have to set aside Rs 2 as a provision. This is deducted from operating profit.

To discourage customers from seeking personal loans, banks have started to insert fresh clauses in loan documents which make it difficult for customers to avail of such loans. Some banks like Corporation Bank and Canara Bank have started asking customers to provide for an undertaking from their employers. "This is like seeking a guarantee from the employer which is not very easy to get," pointed out a senior banker.