Around 200 to 300 loss-making branches of the Punjab National Bank will either be closed, merged or revamped over the next year. Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Sunil Mehta told Moneycontrol that “two or three branches” had already been shut down, and that a departments was working on the plan for the others.

A group of senior officials of the Punjab National Bank – India’s second-largest public sector lender – will carry out a detailed study and come up with strategies to rationalise its network of branches, according to the report. Mehta said they would tweak their business strategy to turn loss-making branches into profit-making units.

Since March, the Delhi-based bank has shut down 928 ATMs – till September end, it had 9,753 ATMs, down from 10,681 in March end. The bank added nine branches to its network from April to June, but it closed six branches in the second quarter, taking the total to 6,940 till September end.