The bank will open new branches in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Gujarat, Maharashtra and other places. With this addition the total number of branches will go up to 366 by next January.

The bank has licence to install 25 offsite automatic teller machines (ATM) and 7 mobile ATMs.

On the business side, R Venkataraman, chairman & CEO said the bank is looking at a business growth of 25 per cent this fiscal.

The bank''s performance during the first six months of the current year is quite encouraging. As on 30th September 2007, the bank''s deposits stood at Rs.5134 crore and advances at Rs3407 crore.

"The last quarter the bank saw its credit portfolio grow by Rs70 crore," said Venkataraman.

Last fiscal Catholic Syrian Bank had a deposit base of Rs4748 crore and an advances portfolio of Rs3012 crore.

According to him the bank is employing a targeted marketing strategy whereby each month focus is given on one particular business segment for credit growth. Next month Catholic Syrian Bank will run a campaign to increase its lending to medical professionals.

The is all set to complete the development of core banking solution with the city based company Lasersoft Infotech Ltd. The bank has selected Wipro Infotech as the systems integrator, BSNL and VSNL for telecom connectivity and data centre respectively. The hardware will be sourced from Cisco.