SBI eyes 100 digital branches

Adhering to financial inclusion, India’s largest public sector lender State Bank of India (SBI) is expected to open 100 new digital branches in the country this year, SBI Chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya said on Tuesday.

The lender will also launch a private wealth management business in India’s IT Capital, Bengaluru, on Thursday.

Allaying concerns over inadequate capitalisation of banks reeling under stressed assets, Bhattacharya said that SBI and several others in the public sector would divest non-core assets for meeting the funding requirement as per the Basel III norms.

Delivering the Assocham Foundation Day Lecture here, Bhattacharya said, “Let people rest assured that the banks will be capitalised both by the government, as also through generation of internal resources by sale of non-core assets.”

She said that as part of the ‘Indradhanush’ package of Rs 1,80,000 crore, the government was to capitalise the PSU banks to the extent of Rs 70,000 crore, while the balance of Rs 1,10,000 crore was to be raised by the individual banks through different means. SBI has identified certain non-core assets and some unlisted entities which would be used for raising such resources for measuring up to Basel III norms.