Arundhati Bhattacharya, the new chief of the State Bank of India, will deploy more technology in the bank’s unfinished war against rising bad loans.
The first woman boss of the country’s largest bank, however, warned that the bad loan problem could worsen before it improves.
Till the quarter ended June 30, the bank had accumulated bad loans worth Rs 60,891 crore, which translated to 5.56 per cent of the bank’s total loans.
“There is no way anybody can say that the war on bad loans is over. We have to ensure that whatever is being done, we do it better and use a lot of other weapons in order to control bad loans.
“I would say we will be using information technology (IT) much, much more…we have not leveraged IT much,” Bhattacharya said in her first address to the press after assuming charge.
Bhattacharya, however, refused to put a number at which the bank will be able to cap the bad loans.
“We will also be looking at rationalising the (organisation) structure, as to how the bad loans are managed, who actually takes it (responsibility) and at what stage to get much quicker and better recovery,” she added.
ASSOCIATE BANKs MERGER
Citing capital constraints, Bhattacharya, clarified that it will not be possible for SBI to merge any of its associate banks before March.
“We have asked for capital from the Government. Only after we are comfortable with the capital, we will start the merger process. It will start this year but will not be completed,” she said.