Nepal’s banks are now e-merging in very high pace by merging among themselves. As the central bank forced them to merge, they thought it appropriate to merge in emergency than to immerse in the pool of problems slowly.

The e-merging trend is interesting as by now not only the marriage between two firms but a third party has also begun to creep in, rather unexpectedly. The new mergres are sure to go beyond the diagonal or triangular, and can be expected to go further to attracting potential entities from a quadrangular, pentagonal or hexagonal directions, in dozens and scores. This drive towards unity in the financial sector, completely opposite to the nation’s march towards diversity and division in the name of federalism in the realm of politics, is surely awe-inspiring.

With this pace of mergers, the days are not far away that there will soon be only three banks in Nepal– the central bank, a governmentowned bank and a private sector bank But with the mergers, a new problem has also emerged – problem a suitable name for the new entity created. If banks A, B and C are merging, A cannot accept the new bank be named B or C. same goes for B and C. If they name the new entity ABC, again there is problem because in this case A will be happier than B and C as A comes first in the name. They cannot name it BCA or CAB either for the same reason. Hundreds of banks, development banks, finance companies, micro-finance companies and thousands of saving cooperatives in existence have seemingly used up all the conceivable names. And many of the banks have also used names like those of the international banks, thereby narrowing the possibility of picking up a good foreign name.

But they need not panic as the new trend in the international market is to take funny names, unlike serious names so far chosen by Nepali banks. The customers find it easier to remember such names thus ensuring top of the mind recall, as they say in marketing jargon. Look at these names of foreign banks: Redneck Bank, Blue Ball National Bank, Tightwad Bank, First National Bank, The Fifth Third Bank, Moody National Bank etc.

Therefore, my suggestion to the emerging Nepali banks is to go for off-the-beat names that may reflect more accurately the character of the Board Chairman, CEO or Promoter Group. Few suggestions:


• Topless Bank Ltd.

• Freak Bank

• The Drunken Liar Ltd.

• Mom, Dad & Sons Bank Ltd.

• Shook and Hook Bank

• Siphon and Run Bank

• Doodle and Drown Bank and so on



Even your branch, products or bank account names could be different. For example: Pig (not big) Savings Accounts, Beauty Parlour Branch etc. Similarly, instead Oldage Saving Accounts you can have Bald Saving Accounts; instead of Supreme Saving Accounts you can have Superman or Spiderman Saving Scheme.

But at this juncture, the banks must be mindful to pick the word from the right language. As you know many of schools and collages with the English name are now targets of the sister or brother organizations of our political parties. May be tomorrow, such very anglicized names could prove eye pricking to this or that party. I would not advise here in to go for Nepali lexicon directly as Nepal is hopefully be federalized that is why the banks also need to learn to dance in the local tune means choose a right language.