Running US ops tough on high compliance cost: SBI

The bank has reduced front office positions by 100%

Country's largest public sector lender State Bank of India today said managing business operations in the United States has become very tough due to high compliance heaped on bank having small set up.

The regulatory norms for big and small size banks are same. Those with plain vanilla activities like SBI bear brunt of such costs, SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya said at US-India Partnership organised Asia Society in Mumbai. 

Fighting costs associated with high compliance has made SBI to scaled down front office operations at branches in US especially at its subsidiary  in California. 

SBI has reduced front office positions by 100% while scaled up back office operations, for treasury operationsn by 300%.

"It is not clear  to run operations in such circumstances,' she said. SBI  has 194 offices overseas.