The country’s largest lender, State Bank of India (SBI) has some major news disclosed to the shareholders at its 65th Annual General Meeting, yesterday.
The bank will institute ‘Work from Anywhere (WFA)’ infrastructure, to contain and push down the nominated numbers of spiraling count of Covid positive cases, all around the country.
SBI Chairperson Rajnish Kumar has also announced that the lender will focus more on cost reduction, rationalization and reskilling of workforce and put in a lot of focus on improving the staff productivity.
SBI’s WFM Infrastructure to Save Rs 1000 Crore
In its 65th AGM, SBI concluded that it will release its Work from Anywhere (WFA) infrastructure so that employees can work from any location.
The lender also informed that the move shall save a total of Rs 1,000 crore through cost optimization and will be a key component of their business continuity during such pandemic times.
SBI YONO Flourishing
The pandemic has made social distancing and contact-less services the new normal today.
Despite this creating huge losses to many organizations, SBI’s digital banking channel YONO is notably gaining a lot of traction due to the current times.
SBI YONO has already achieved sizeable growth through digital channel by increasing share of wallet and acquiring at scale.
SBI is working meticulously towards doubling user registrations in the next six months and wants to strengthen the platform through new offerings like end to end home loans, pre-approved car loans and personal gold loans.
Rationalization and Redeployment of Workforce
SBI has sorted cost reduction, rationalization and reskilling of workforce, as major pillars to achieve better employer efficiency and productivity, amid times of the global pandemic.
Kumar has addressed the shareholders about redeploying workforce from administration offices to sales roles, as it proves to reduce the effect of the Covid 19 pandemic on its business.
“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”, says Kumar.
He believes that 2021 will be a rather challenging year for the bank due the pandemic but SBI strong liability franchise with a customer base of over 44 crores, diversified loan portfolio, digital banking channels and identified legacy stress will help it to navigate this period.