How SBI Is Reinventing Itself To Be A Digital Bank

In its bid to become one of the world's top 10 global digital banks, SBI has undertaken a slew of digital initiatives. In a detailed interview with EC’s Nivedan Prakash, Mrutyunjay Mahapatra, DMD and CIO, State Bank of India, states how the bank is acquiring the agility of a startup by embracing digital technologies

Today every bank is functioning like a technology company and the whole business is seen through the lens of digital technologies. What are your observations about the banking industry?

The digital technologies have transformed every industry. There is no public or private sector – it is impacting every segment. Everybody has to embrace digital and the digital maturity level will distinguish men from boys. There are various maturity levels – firms who have started their computerization journey only based on automating the manual system as a productivity thing will now have to re-invent their own experience -- both internal as well as external.

For a large organization like State Bank of India, which has 300,000 employees, 25,000 branches, 60,000 ATMs, 100,000 banking correspondents, and 500,000 POS machines, our technology ecosystem will be different. But technological maturity in the digital age is different from the quantity of technology you have. If you look at the components of digital, there are 4-5 things defining digital. These include Social Media, Mobility, Cloud, Analytics, and Internet of Things (IoT).

For example, if account opening was done in a bank in the manual manner, it has been re-imagined now. In the digital era, the customer is working in a 'self-service' mode. He wants to do banking in a way, place, and at the time of his choice.