- SBI plans to hire up to 4,000 employees for a loan recovery team next year
- The new hires will come from SBI subsidiaries, not the existing workforce
- SBI reported a net NPA ratio of 0.39% for the March quarter, down from 0.47%
Despite reporting a two-decade low in bad loans, State Bank of India plans to hire up to 4,000 employees over the next year to build a dedicated loan recovery and collection team, according to chairman CS Setty.
Speaking to Moneycontrol on the sidelines of the bank's fourth-quarter earnings announcement, Setty said the move is aimed at strengthening the lender's underwriting and recovery mechanisms as its loan book continues to expand.
“Nobody can get this kind of asset quality, and we completely revamped our underwriting. We are now launching a strong collections mechanism. We will be employing almost 3,000 to 4,000 people on the loan-collection front,” Setty told the publication.
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He clarified that the new hires would not be drawn from SBI's existing workforce. Instead, the bank plans to leverage its subsidiary network for recruitment.
“They will not come from the existing employee base. Instead, we will look to leverage our subsidiary. They will be on the field but centrally managed by us,” he said.
The country's largest lender reported a net NPA ratio of 0.39% for the March quarter, improving from 0.47% a year ago, while gross NPA declined to 1.49% from 1.82%.
According to Setty, the new collection framework is intended to prevent early-stage stressed loans from slipping into the bank's balance sheet, especially with the Reserve Bank of India's expected credit loss (ECL) norms requiring provisions even for SMA-1 accounts.
SBI had a workforce of 2.45 lakh employees at the end of FY26, compared with 2.36 lakh a year earlier. The bank on May 8 posted a 5.6% year-on-year rise in standalone net profit at Rs 19,684 crore for the January-March quarter and announced a dividend of Rs 17.35 per share.
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