State Bank of India (SBI), the country's largest lender, is expecting competition in the banking space to hot up with the introduction of new entities.

The banking landscape is changing with a host of new players looking to start operations. Apart from two new universal banks, 11 payments banks will start operating in India over the next 18 months. In addition, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will announce licences to start small finance banks. Around 70 entities had applied for small finance bank licence.

State Bank of India, the country's largest lender with 213,000 employees, has roped in Harvard Business School for performance appraisal of its middle and senior management. All employees above the deputy general manager and up to deputy managing director's level now necessarily have to take 10-20 e-modules linked to their performance appraisal.

An employee can earn up to five points in the overall performance appraisal, which is of 100 marks, if they clear all the mandated modules. Training via e-modules has been made mandatory for SBI officers.

While payments banks are not a threat to the existing universal banks, State Bank of India (SBI) will strengthen its low cost credit delivery model in the wake of the rural outreach of the upcoming entities.

"The kind of remittance services that the payments banks will offer, universal banks already have that in place. Moreover, the payments bank will not be able to provide any credit history to the borrowers. The only way they have an advantage is their access to remote and inaccessible parts due to lower cost of operations. SBI is also coming up with a low-cost model to reach the unbanked areas," Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya said.

State Bank of India, the country’s largest lender, will open 250 digital branches.

“Digital provides us such a good medium. On one side we have the business correspondent model, then the digital medium for new-age customers who are coming in and then, in between, we have the branch model. We have started the digital branch model and the learnings from them, and ill be rolling out another 250 digital branches this year that will be on the self-service mode,” said Arundhati Bhattacharya, the bank's chief, at an internal conclave here.

State Bank of India (SBI) will keep the process of merging its associate banks on hold for some time to come as the country’s largest lender deals with upcoming competition from new banks and transition to the digital platform.

"Even if we merge them inside, my balance sheet will not go up, the group balance sheet remains the same (on consolidated basis). And therefore, the valuation I get will almost remain the same," SBI Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya said on the sidelines of the launch of SBI's mobile wallet.

When Arundhati Bhattacharya took charge as chairman of State Bank of India (SBI) in October 2013, the country's largest lender had more than Rs 65,000 crore of non-performing assets (NPAs). The number, which was 5.64 per cent of its total advances, was bigger than the loan book of some private sector banks. To make matters worse, a currency crisis had unfolded in mid-2013, which prompted the central bank to reverse its interest rate stance, as a result of which treasury books of banks were bleeding.

India’s largest lender, State Bank of India is slated to launch its mobile wallet, SBI Buddy, on Tuesday, an ET report has said.

With this, SBI will be entering into the fast-growing mobile wallet business, which already has players like HDFC’s PayZapp, ICICI Bank’s Pocket.

Global technology giant Microsoft will be working with Andhra Pradesh government to implement TV White Spaces technology on a pilot basis in Srikakulam district. White Spaces is a technology that uses unused television terrestrial spectrum to deliver low cost internet connectivity.

This is the first time this technology is being used in India. Along with Microsoft other agencies including the Department of Telecom (DoT) are working with the government to bring low-cost internet connectivity to four educational institutions in this remote north coastal district under this pilot project.

State Bank of India (SBI) is planning to tap the potential of e-commerce business and focus on digital platform in the near future, said B Sriram, managing director (National Banking Group), SBI. The Bank is also looking at increasing its growth in Small and Medium Entreprises (SME) portfolio to 10 to 12% by the end of the year.

The Bank, which already entered into agreement with some of the e-commerce players, would look at covering the entire e-commerce value chain, he said.

Banking stocks gained on Thursday as record low retail inflation stoked rate cut hopes in the upcoming monetary policy review in late September.

Share price of public sector banks such as State Bank of India (SBI), Bank of Baroda and Punjab National Bank were up over 2 per cent in the early trade. Private lenders ICICI Bank, Federal Bank, Axis Bank and HDFC Bank also gained over 1 per cent.

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