RBI establishes supervisory colleges for SBI, ICICI

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has set up the supervisory college for cross border cooperation for the supervision of State Bank of India (SBI) and ICICI Bank. Both the banks have substantial cross border presence and thus were chosen for the supervisory college, the RBI said in a statement.

While SBI is the largest bank in the country with maximum foreign officers among Indian banks, ICICI Bank is the largest private sector lender, which also have a significant presence abroad. SBI will have nine host country supervisors while ICICI Bank will have seven host country supervisors.

This is the first time RBI has established supervisory colleges for the banks.

The concept of supervisory college was put forward in the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision (BCBS) October 2010 document named good practice principles on supervisory colleges.

Supervisory colleges have evolved the world over as an important component of effective supervisory oversight of an international banking group. This mechanism was developed with the aim of reducing supervisory overlap and filling in supervisory gaps for better supervisory co-operation enunciated in Basel-2 framework, the banking regulator said.

India doesn’t have any systemically important banks (SIBs), we decided to benchmark India with the best practices across the globe and establish two supervisory colleges for SBI and ICICI Bank, the RBI said.

The first meeting of supervisory colleges for SBI was held on December 3 and for ICICI Bank on December 4 in Mumbai.

KC Charkrabarty, deputy governor, RBI said: “Supervisory colleges will become a key tool of consolidated supervision particularly considering the ever expanding footprint of Indian banks abroad.”

Pratip Chaudhuri, chairman, SBI and Chanda Kochhar, managing director and CEO, ICICI Bank led the teams of the respective banks in the first meeting.