Our Bureau State Bank of India on Friday launched its Global NRI Centre (GNC) in Kochi, a one-stop customer service point for all NRI banking-related activities.

To further enhance the service experience for NRIs, the bank also launched other services such as wealth management, SBI Intelligent Assist, free post-box, and remittance facility for US-based customers.

Asked why Kerala has been chosen for the centre, Rajnish Kumar, Chairman, SBI, said it is the State that receives maximum remittances. There has been a consistent growth in NRI deposits of the bank and out of the total deposits, 8 per cent comes from NRI accounts.

“We have witnessed consistent growth of our NRI banking portfolio. Our endeavour is to offer all our products and services on a digital platform so that NRI customers experience the ease of banking with us from wherever they are in the world and that’s why we have centralised all our services and offer them under the Global NRI centre, besides offering them specialised services,” he said.

Technological advancements are creating opportunities to modernise and de-risk the way vital remittances are transferred across borders. Formal remittances are also seen as a key stepping stone to improving financial inclusion by encouraging more people to have bank accounts, he added.

Leveraging its strong NRI customer base of over 33 lakh as on January 31, the bank, through its GNC, aims to centralise operations which are currently spread across 16 circles, 92 NRI branches in 66 different locations and several NRI-intensive branches.

SBI embarked on its international journey with the opening of its first foreign branch in Colombo in 1864. Today, it has 207 offices in 37 countries.