How do you look at the world of technology after coming from SBI?
Any organisation that’s not taking information technology (IT) seriously is not going to sustain beyond a particular point in time. IT is evolving at almost a supersonic pace. The agentic AI, which we are working with today, was introduced in our company last year, and this year, we have progressed to the point where we are now declaring agentic enterprises. Therefore, it’s something that people really need to take note of, and lean into to reap its benefits. Otherwise, it’s something that’s going to overwhelm you at some point in time.
From the world of SBI to this speed of technology, how has the transition been?
SBI teaches you to lead as you learn. That’s the speciality of people in SBI, because they transfer their employees regularly. That gave us the ability to learn on our feet.
As you become a leader, you need to start adding value the moment you take on the role. We learned about adding value from a very early stage, and that has stood me in very good stead in my transition from being a 40-year banker to somebody who works with people who are almost five generations younger.
You allowed sabbatical leave for women at SBI. Was there anything else that we do not know that you did for your women colleagues?
I was hoping that the rest of the banks would follow (coming up with the sabbatical leave policy), but they haven’t. I still hope that they will.
I noticed that most young female employees were in platform roles rather than operations, or branch postings. Meanwhile, their male counterparts were completing rural assignments and serving as branch managers. In banking, an officer needs two years of independent charge and two years of rural service to qualify for the next promotion. If women did not take up these assignments, they would fall behind in their career progression. But the female employees were facing challenges in accommodation and commuting in rural areas. So we decided to identify specific rural branches where women could either commute and rent houses in the bank’s name.
We also introduced cervical cancer vaccination for all women staff and their wards, and ensured that there was at least one woman gynaecologist, or paediatrician available in all major centres.
There was a time when we had so many women CEOs across banks, but not any longer. What really happened?
I left a very strong pipeline of women behind, and many of them have really gone on to do a lot of things. Having said that, this is not a glass ceiling that’s very easy to break. We were very fortunate because at that time, there were loads of women leading banks. I hope those days come back.
During your tenure, you had to see a lot of challenging things, like stressed assets, etc. Do you think things have changed for the better, and how do you also look at the regulator’s role in resolving issues?
The regulator has a very large role to play in all of these matters. My successor and I had the rough end of the stick in respect of NPAs. Challenges still exist, but are of a different nature. One of the biggest challenges confronting the sector now is technology — specifically, how to use it to deliver increasingly better services. Banks must also reconcile that much of the work currently done by people can now be handled by digital agents. The real question is how best to leverage this technology to deliver better services, all the way to the last mile, where we still haven’t been able to get across the financial literacy that can enable us to unlock the potential of the entire country.
Without addressing this gap, Viksit Bharat cannot truly become a reality. Technology is the only way to achieve this, and the same applies to the banking system. The BFSI sector is, by far, the most digitally mature sector. With that maturity comes greater responsibility — to absorb emerging technologies, integrate them into daily operations, deliver the best outcomes for customers, and show the way forward for other industries.
During your SBI tenure, you had taken several steps to bring in technology. SBI was called smart bank. But was that enough? Looking back, do you feel that you could have done more?
On the digital front, we did what we could — in terms of the risk management techniques, credit underwriting — to ensure that we were getting to the right people, whether it be through financial inclusion or otherwise, and the variety of products that we could bring to them.
At that point, many of these things that are available today were not available. (SBI) Yono, when it came out, was far ahead of anything that even private sector, or foreign banks had. Maybe we should have focused more on becoming agile and nimble, because the times ahead demand that.
Other than technology, do you think there was something that was unfinished?
The one unfinished business is customer service. You can never get to a position to ensure that customer service is really at the level that customers would want to be at. I’ve tried very hard, and that’s why I’m saying this.
When customer service goes digital, it introduces new risks into the system. Crimes like digital arrests are typically targeted at the most vulnerable sections of society — the elderly and the young — who often lack understanding, and act out of fear.
These initiatives need far greater continuity and scale. At present, they tend to be one-off efforts rather than sustained programs.
 "Arundhati Bhattacharya, former chairperson of State Bank of India (Photo: Kamlesh Pednekar)")