Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday said the banking sector must continue to innovate and lead amid the global landscape change, and said that the country’s largest bank SBI has vented its confidence that it will adopt technology, sustainability and inclusion as the guide principles.
The Minister also said that SBI has evolved to meet the ever-evolving and changing landscape, maintaining its position as market leader despite regulatory tightening, and also spoke at the Platinum Jubilee celebration on the Foundation Day of Bank of India.
“The world is changing rapidly, and the banking sector must continue to innovate and lead. We believe SBI will rise to the opportunity to embrace technology, sustainability and inclusion as its guiding principles,” Sitharaman said.
She said SBI is reinventing its personal distribution channels to meet evolving customer expectations.
“As the world’s most populous country and the largest commercial bank, serving around 5.6% of the world’s population, SBI is more agile and competitive than ever,” she added.
Sitharaman said SBI, the largest bank in the Indian subcontinent, is currently ideally positioned to provide superior value creation through sustainable growth.
SBI aims to achieve this by increasing operational excellence across lending performance, asset quality, profitability and capital generation, thereby driving wealth creation, she said.
“To strengthen these efforts, SBI has strengthened its infrastructure, established a robust monitoring and control framework, and built a talent pool of dedicated experts. Additionally, the banks have redesigned their internal processes to improve risk management and drive growth rates,” the minister added.
The SBI was made up of the Act of Parliament on July 1, 1955. Over the past 70 years, the bank’s customer base has risen to over 51 crores. Its total business has grown to Rs 870,000 with staff of over Rs 237 lakh.
