Finance:

Agriculture being the mainstay of the district, the financial activities here still have a strong primary sector flavour. In rural segments private and personal money lending is still prevalent as a mode of short-term financial transaction. In fact, Genasinkuni Agricultural Bank at Genasinkuni in Sagar taluk was started as far back as 1895, followed by the Shiralakoppa Agricultural Bank in 1898, to offer soft loans to commercial crop growers. The first commercial bank to open its branch in Shimoga was State Bank of Mysore Ltd.,(1914) which was followed by other banking companies, but rather slowly. As a consequence, by the time of independence, the district had just 10 branches of commercial banks, 5 being in Shimoga town itself. After Shimoga it was Sagar which received some importance in the location of bank branches as it was a major areca trading centre of the malnad belt.

This slow but steady growth has today grown into a sound and well spread networks of 153 branches of commercial banks, 27 branches of rural banks, 30 branches of SDCC banks. Canara Bank is the districts' lead bank. KSFC in Shimoga is catering the needs of tiny, small and medium businesses for foundation, expansion, modernisation and diversification.

The commercial banks now assume greater significance than ever before in the economic development of Shimoga and they can sure bring a balance in the channeling of funds for industries, trade, commerce and independent enterprises on the one hand, and the core area of agriculture on the other.

Very recently, major private sector banks like, ICICI Bank, UTI Bank, Citi Financial have opened their branches in Shimoga.