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SBI's retailing, IT initiatives

By Our Corporate Reporter

CHENNAI OCT. 18. State Bank of India is laying greater thrust on retailing and IT initiatives and planning to invest about Rs. 500 crores towards this end. It had concluded an arrangement with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and FSN of Australia for providing the necessary software, said P. N. Venkatachalam, Managing Director and Group Executive (National Banking), said at a press conference here after inaugurating a SBI Property Fair.

The bank had already computerised about 3,177 branches out of the total domestic network of 9,038 branches. It plans to computerise about 2,000 branches shortly.

The bank would also be expanding the ATM network by 1,000 this year and by another 1,000 by 2003. At present, there are 1,138 ATMs, of which 651 are networked. The main thrust would be to link a major part of the ATMs, Mr. Venkatachalam said. The bank has so far issued 1.93 million ATM cards. All the ATM card holders would be offered debit cards soon.

Other IT initiatives of the bank are automated treasury and risk management systems, asset liability management projects and centralised IT architecture with single channel for data, voice and video network.

About the current business growth, Mr. Venkatachalam said the main thrust would be on retail and personal banking. In the retail sector, the bank had advanced about Rs. 2,567 crores out of the total of Rs. 3,946 crores in April- September. Housing loan constituted Rs. 1,922 crores. It plans to extend another Rs. 1,500 crores in the remaining six months.

SBI would be extending housing loan at an interest rate of 9.5 per cent on floating rate basis and 9.75 per cent under fixed rate for a 5 year loan, 10 per cent and 10.25 per cent respectively for loans above five years but less than10 years and 10.5 per cent and 10.75 per cent for ten years and above.

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