IPPB 2016 - Salary, Exam Pattern and Preparation Strategy

Hi Folks,
Today we are going to discuss IPPB as an organization, the expected benefits of working with it and strategy to crack its exam.

IPPB issued the first ever recruitment notification for various roles in September. Scale 2 & 3 officer's exam is going to happen on 17th December and exam for scale 1 officers will be held in Dec/Jan as per notification.

Brief Introduction about IPPB

IPPB is a wholly owned subsidiary of Department of Posts, GoI. Payment banks have been envisaged as instruments for furthering the goal of financial inclusion in India i.e taking banks to rural masses, provide them services and the bank which have been unbanked so far. IPPB under India Post has immense potential to grab this opportunity and set a benchmark for other payment banks in India. This so, because India Post has a huge network of branches already and a considerable experience of how to function effectively in rural areas.

Work conditions and other factors

Salary - Scale 1 (65k approx), Scale 2 (83k approx), Scale 3 (1,06,000 approx). Whoopee, a quick jump in motivation levels!
Since its the first recruitment for IPPB, most of the officers are expected to get postings in tier 1 / tier 2 cities as it needs functional set up in big cities first and an expansion later in rural areas which are the ultimate target.
As payment banks can not advance loans and transaction limits are up to Rs 1 lac only, it is expected that work load will be less as compared to other public sector banks. Work life balance- checked!
Once IPPB is fully operational, more postings will be done to rural areas as big cities would already have the considerable manpower. But that will take some time for sure!
Promotional opportunities would be immense for people joining IPPB now due to less manpower and expansion of operations gradually.
There is ample scope for other perks as well that are offered to central government employees.

Strategy for Exam

For scale 2 and Scale 3 officers - online objective test followed by GD/Interview forms the whole criteria. For posts related to technology domains, you are recommended to go through all the IT officer articles and other material available on this blog. Rest of the sections i.e Quant, Reasoning and English will be like any other exam.

For scale 1 officers - exam structure would be like IBPS only i.e Preliminary & Mains followed by Interview. Huge competition is expected as most of the people preparing for bank exams would have applied for it.

Preliminary exam - It would have English, Quants and Reasoning sections. 60 would be considered a safe score to advance through to the Mains stage.
Mains exam - 5 sections (you know about'em all!). Target General Awareness and Computer section (total 60 marks) as a good score in them can offset the average performance in other sections. Reasoning and Quants are expected to be of SBI/ RBI/ NABARD level. So keep your preparations in check and take mock tests to work on speed and accuracy.
Interview - Total marks allocated for interview are 100 with a cut-off of 40%. Weightage of Mains marks and Interview will be 80:20 respectively. Finally, a merit list with score of mains and interview will get you their appointment letter.

For those who could not quality IBPS Mains this time, this is your chance. Boost yourself up, stop listening to sad songs, come out of your shell, pull up your socks and get back on the field. May be you are meant to be associated with IPPB and that too with a salary more than your peers in other PSBs.

Play your game and show how you play it best, Cheers!