Kumar’s logic was that 'work from anywhere' would reduce commute time, and, hence, ensure better services and better work-life balance.
Country’s largest lender, State Bank of India (SBI) expects to save Rs 1,000 crore by instituting Work from Anywhere, chairman Rajnish Kumar said in his speech at the 65th Annual General Meeting of the bank.
“The Bank will institute Work from Anywhere (WFA) infrastructure to facilitate work from any location, while taking care of the social aspects of work-life balance. The measure is expected to save Rs 1,000 crore through cost optimisation and will be a key component of our business continuity during the times of COVID-19,” Rajnish Kumar said.
In the 2019-20 annual report, Kumar had said: “With global acceptability of Work-from-Home (WFH) arrangements, the bank is in the process of upgrading its existing WFH policy to WFA. Productivity tools and technology are already in place to perform administrative work remotely.”
Kumar’s logic was that WFA would reduce commute time, and, hence, ensure better services and better work-life balance. “This is expected to drive down the operational cost for the bank, besides ensuring better motivation and productivity for staff members,” the SBI Chairman said.
SBI has about 2.5 lakh employees and 24,000 branches across different states, including far-flung rural areas where people are still taking baby steps into the world of formal banking.
The focus, going ahead, will be on cost reduction, rationalisation and re-skilling of workforce, improving staff productivity and redeployment of workforce from admin offices to sales roles. Bank will maintain a constant vigil on the emerging stress and take proactive action, to help our borrower customers and maintain asset quality, Kumar said.
“An elaborate business continuity plan is already in place. The Bank has stepped up its monitoring of all the projects under implementation and expects to tide over COVID impact in the short to medium term,” Kumar said.
Bank’s performance
Despite the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic towards the end, SBI’s total deposits grew at a faster rate of 11.34 percent in 2019-20, compared to industry growth of 7.9 percent, to Rs 32.42 lakh crore from the previous year’s level of Rs 29.11 lakh crore. The foreign offices deposits grew by 20.45 percent to Rs 1.17 lakh crore, while domestic deposits grew by 11.03 percent to Rs 31.25 lakh crore, Kumar said.
SBI’s domestic advances grew by 3.75 percent to Rs 20.65 lakh crore, while the foreign offices advances grew at 18.05 percent to Rs 3.57 lakh crore. “Therefore, the gross advances of SBI grew by 5.64 percent to the level of Rs 24.23 lakh crore in FY20 from the previous year level of Rs 22.93 lakh crore. Much of the growth in domestic advances came from personal segment including Home Loans,” Kumar said.
However, the corporate Loan book has declined marginally by 0.87 percent to Rs 8.44 lakh crore in FY20, in line with the Banking industry’s growth trend.
“Major share of the credit went into sectors such as Infrastructure (Power, Roads & Ports) and Services especially Commercial Real Estate and NBFCs. The Corporate Loan book accounts for 38.9 per cent share of PSUs/Govt. sector or the GoI undertakings,” Kumar said.