The History of State Bank Of India dates back to the first decade of the nineteenth century with the setting up of Bank of Calcutta in Calcutta on 2 June 1806.After three years it was renamed as Bank Of Bengal (2 January 1809).On 15th April 1840, the Bank Of Bombay was initiated and on 1st July 1843, the the Bank of Madras was established. The integration of the three banks resulted in the creation of Imperial Bank of India on 27th January 1921.
Structure and Organization
The Banks Corporate Office is located at Mumbai. Its domestic operational area is divided into 14 Circles, each with one Local Head Office and a few Zonal and Regional Offices. The Bank is present not just in the major metropolises of India but has wide reach in the villages of India. The Bank's top management consists of the Chairman, group executives for National Banking Group, Corporate Banking Group, International Banking Group and Associates & Subsidiaries, and four staff functionaries in charge of finance, credit, human resources & technology management and inspection & audit.
Three Strategic Business Units (SBUs) under the Corporate Banking Group have been set up by SBI to pay attention to big corporate customers. Distinguishing features of the SBUs are assimilation of operational planning with operations within each SBU, an alert delivery system with suitable specialist inputs and focused attention on profitability.
The staff and functionaries at various levels have been delegated higher financial powers to ensure quicker decision making in credit areas and disposal of a large number of credit proposals at operating units' level. A committee approach has been adopted, both at the apex and circle levels, for sanction of large advances and loans. Keeping this in mind Central Office Credit Committee and Circle Credit Committees have been set up to ultimately ensure faster delivery. Credit and systemic risk processes have thus accordingly been restructured. Simplified and concise credit appraisal formats have been designed to ensure improvement in the quality of credit decisions, better quality of assets and reduction of Non Performing Assets or NPAs.
Transformation In SBI
The SBI has undergone major transformation in the recent years. The bank has ventured into new areas of business like Pension Funds, General Insurance, Custodial Services, Private Equity, Mobile Banking, Point Of Sale, Merchant Acquisition, Advisory Services, and Structured Products etc. The bank forsees tremendous growth potential in all these areas.
The bank has made forays into the rural banking with state of the art technology. The bank has outlaid an ambitious plan to expand rural banking to 100,000 villages in the next few years.
The bank has ambitious plans to focus on the high end market to support India's increasing mid/large Corporate with a wide range of products and services. The bank is consolidating its global treasury operations and diversifying into structured products and derivative instruments. At present SBI provides the largest amount of infrastructure debt and the bank is the largest provider of commercial borrowings in the country.SBI is a Fortune 500 company.
The Bank is in the process of expanding its base overseas. Currently it has 82 offices abroad spread over 32 countries. The seven subsidiaries of SBI are SBI Capital Markets, SBICAP Securities, SBI DFHI, SBI Factors, SBI Life and SBI Cards.
