Conglomerate bank: BoB sees more contribution from subsidiaries, joint ventures and associates to group assets and profits

Debadatta Chand, Managing Director and CEO of Bank of Baroda

This is part of India’s second largest public sector bank’s plan to expand the “BoB Group” in terms of reach and scale and become a banking conglomerate, said Debadatta Chand, MD & CEO.

At the end of December 2025, the contribution of subsidiaries and joint ventures to the government bank’s consolidated net profit was 7 percent and to consolidated assets 5 percent.

“We have developed a concept called ‘BoB Group’ and we want to expand the Group, both in terms of reach and size.

“So when I say scope, it means we want to expand the area of ​​parabanking that is of interest to us,” Chand shared. business line in an interaction.

In this context, he cited the example of the Bank’s plan to set up a Standalone Primary Dealer (SPD) division.

So far, BoB has been carrying out the Primary Dealer (PD) activity at the department level. The Bank has recently received approval from RBI to set up a wholly owned subsidiary for undertaking SPD business through capital infusion up to ₹2000 crores.

SPDs support the government’s borrowing program through underwriting government bond issues (G-Secs) and trading in financial instruments such as G-Secs, government bonds, government development bonds, corporate bonds and various money market instruments.

“We want to expand our reach as a Group. We also want to scale up our existing operations… So one of the key themes for FY27 is to work on making our Group significant so that beyond the standalone bank, the contribution of subsidiaries and JVs to the group’s overall operations and profitability goes up from current levels,” the BoB chief said.

Chand emphasized that the bank is always open to capital infusions to scale up these businesses. “So if we want to be financially universal in terms of conglomerate banking, I think we need a scale higher than this (current level),” he said.

BoB currently has eight domestic subsidiaries (including Nainital Bank, BoBCARD, BoB Capital Markets and IndiaFirst Life Insurance), seven foreign subsidiaries (four in Africa and one each in the UK, New Zealand and Guyana), one joint venture (India Infradebt) and three employees (Indo Zambia Bank and two regional rural banks).

Among the twelve public sector banks (as of December 2025), BoB is India’s second largest bank (total business – deposits plus advances: (₹28,91,653 crore), closely followed by Punjab National Bank (₹28,91,528 crore), Canara Bank (₹27,13,594 crore) and Union Bank of India (₹ 22,39,740 crore). State Bank of India is India’s largest bank (total turnover: ₹104 lakh crore).

Published on February 9, 2026