The country’s largest lender, State Bank of India (SBI), plans to foray into the wealth management business in the current fiscal with a view to tap high networth clients, a top bank official said.
?We plan to introduce wealth management services in a phased manner in the current fiscal to help high net worth individual clients to preserve and grow their wealth,? said O P Bhatt, chairman, SBI.
Bhatt was addressing shareholders at its annual general meeting held in Mumbai on Wednesday.
The bank is also scouting for a global partner for its merchant acquiring business which it plans to run under a separate company.
?It is proposed to conduct the merchant acquiring business under a separate company with an experienced and reputed global partner,? he said. The public sector lender also plans to deploy 6 lakh point-of-service (PoS) terminals during the next 5 years across rural and urban areas, Bhatt said.
This initiative will facilitate SBI’s debit card acceptance pan-India, he said.
SBI will also shortly sign an agreement to operationalise a joint investment fund in collaboration with sovereign entities of Oman, the SBI chief said.
Presently, the SBI group has a network of 17,337 branches which includes 4,841 branches of its six associate banks.
Bhatt said seven niche aras mobile banking, merchant acquisition business, SME current account and supply chain finance, savings bank, cash management product, NRI remittances and government business have been identified by the bank’s payment solutions group for implementing a comprehensive strategy with aggressive business plan improved processes and matching organizational structure.