State Bank of India Strategy Analysis

Amity Business School, Noida

State Bank of India

Business strategy analysis

Submitted By: - Submitted To: -Vineet Goel Dr. Himani SharmaMBA(G) Amity Business SchoolC-60 Noida


Defining BankAccording to Oxford English Dictionary, Bank is, “An establishment for custody of money received from or on behalf of, its customers. Its essential duty is the payment of the orders given on it by the customers, its profit mainly from the investment of money left unused by them”. Banking Regulation Act, 1949 (Sec. 5(c)), has defined the banking company as, “Banking Company means any company which transacts business of banking in India”. According to Section 5B, “banking means the accepting of deposit of money from the public for the purpose of leading or investment, which are repayable on demand or otherwise and are withdraw able by cheque, draft, and order or otherwise.”


Strategic Evolution of SBI

Strategy can be defined as the periodic changes a business must introduce to its structure and operations in order to ensure continuity in the face of environmental changes. The strategic evolution of a business can thus be understood in terms of major social institutions such as the State, the market, community or civil society and their interrelationships that may have a bearing on its working and thereby the achievement of the principle objectives of its establishment. Historians recognize moments of profound change when the balance of power or influence shifts between these institutions. The SBI is a dynamic organization and has been continuously changing its form to adapt to its environment. Here, its three key environmental factors:

• Ownership and governance• Business processes• Structures and systems

Mission statement:

To retain the banks position as the premier Indian financial services. It also aims to be a group with world class standards and significant global business commitments to excellence in customer, shareholder and employee satisfaction so as to play a leading role in expanding and diversifying financial services while continuing emphasis on its development banking role.

Vision:

To be a premier Indian financial services group with global perspective, world class standard of the efficiency and professionalism and also its core institutional values, To retain its position in the country as a pioneer in developing countries, It also aims to maximize its shareholders value through high sustained earnings per share, To become an institution with a culture of mutual care and commitment. It also focuses on a pleasant working environment to have continuous learning opportunities.

Values:

• Excellence in customer service• Profit orientation• Belonging and commitment to bank• Fairness in all dealings and relations• Risk taking and innovations• Team playing• Learning and renewal• Integrity• Transparency and discipline in policies and systems


Overview of SBI

With the view of adapting to the extra-institutional changes mentioned above and maintaining continuity, SBI has continuously rechristened itself. Following is a list of major strategic changes introduced at the bank. These have been dealt with in detail in successive paragraphs.

The State Bank of India is a govt. sector bank. The evolution of State Bank of India can be traced back to the first decade of the 19th century. It began with the establishment of the Bank of Calcutta in Calcutta, on 2 June 1806. The bank was redesigned as the Bank of Bengal, three years later, on 2 Januar y 1809. It was the first ever joint-stock bank of the British India, established under the sponsorship of the Government of Bengal. Subsequently, the Bank of Bombay (established on 15 April 1840) the Bank of Madras (established on 1 July 1843) followed the Bank of Bengal. These three banks dominated the modern banking scenario in India, until when they were amalgamated to form the Imperial Bank of India, on 27 January 1921. In order to serve the economy as a whole and rural sector in particular, the All India Rural Credit Survey Committee recommended the formation of a state-partnered and state-sponsored bank. Hence the committee proposed the takeover of the Imperial Bank of India, and integrating with it, the former state-owned or state-associate banks.Subsequently, an Act was passed in the Parliament of India in May 1955. As a result, the State Bank of India (SBI) was established on 1 July 1955. Later on, the State Bank of India (Subsidiary Banks) Act was passed in 1959.The State Bank of India emerged as a pace-setter, with its operations carried out by the 480 offices comprising branches, sub offices and three Local Head Offices, inherited from the Imperial Bank. Instead of serving as mere repositories of the community's savings and lending to creditworthy parties, the State Bank of India catered to the needs of the customers, by banking purposefully.

Key Areas of Operations

The business operations of SBI can be broadly classif ied into the key in come generating areas such as National Banking, International Banking, Corporate Banking, & Treasury operations


Generic strategies adopted by State Bank of India:

Institution for advanced learning: to provide state of the art training in financial products to middle level and senior level executives

Internal consultant/change agent: to act as a catalyst for change in attitudes and orientation of banking staff and to provide expertise and consultative support

Feedback supplier: to capture and structure feedback from trainees and from the market Think tank: to provide expert and inform suggestions, model business strategies,

analysis of market developments from a banker perspective Research and development role: to carry out research on contemporary subjects

that are relevant to the banks short term and medium term and operational needs and policy for mulation

Overlapping staff training centers: to validate and closely monitor the staff training centers in seven circles attached to the academy.

Centralization and Decentralization

It has a well defined system for decision making process. The financial decisions are taken at various levels by different officials depending upon their positions and also through committee approach.The centralized credit processing cells are being formed at certain centers for sanction of personal segment loans and under SBI segments. Its branches source the applications and forward them to the respective credit processing sale for their consideration.Regarding the sanction of loan each officer of the bank considers the loan proposal sand takes a decision in terms of scheme of delegation of powers, on merits of proposal. If the bank needs to purchase any kind of equipment like computers or software branch managers are required to take permission from high authority. So in term of decision making centralization is high and low decentralization wherein the managers have some powers to take decision but at a limited base.

The Restructuring

To overcome the intense competition from private and foreign banks, SBI planned a major organizational restructuring exercise.The key aspects involved. redesigning of branches,. providing alternate channels;. focus on a lean structure and. Technological up gradation.. A business process reengineering (BPR) team wasconstituted in June 2003 with McKinsey & company as consultants. The BPR's basic goal was to create an operating architecture that would facilitate service delivery of international standards.

The project objectives were defined as. increasing customer satisfaction and convenience,. freeing up time for branch manager and

Amity Business School, Noida. branch staff to focus on sales and marketing,. enhancing SBI's competitiveness in the market,. increasing the profitability through higher market share and improved process efficiency"

New Products and Services

Apart from restructuring, SBI launched several innovative, value-added products and services to project a customer friendly image. It launched a special service for corporate customers called 'telebanking and remote login' to support transactional requests. This facility would be available at 593 branches, and remote login at 269 branches. The banks trade finance solutions, called EXIMBILLS, were intended to handle trade finance transactions efficiently and enhance the range of services provided to corporate and network branches.In March 2004, SBI announced that it would introduce ‘anywhere banking’ facility for its customers over 9000 branches across India in the next two years. All the branches in Mumbai would provide this facility by December 2004. SBI also launched different customized loan programs to cater to various sections of society depending on income levels and repayment capabilities. Interest rates and repayment periods were tailor-made to suit the customer groups.

Alliances and Tie-Ups

To boost its business, SBI entered into several alliances and tie-ups with automobile, insurance, mutual fund, project finance and medical equipment companies.

Auto.Finance

Unlike other competitors that relied on reduced interestrates to get business, SBI extended the tenure of car loans from five to seven years, thereby lowering the monthly debt repayment burden of the loan seeker. SBI entered into a tie-up with Maruti, the largest automobile manufacturer in India, to provide loans for purchase of Maruti cars at therate of 10.05 per cent and 11.25 per cent for three years and above three years respectively. After the scheme wasintroduced, SBI emerged as the largest financier for Maruti cars in India and the number of Maruti vehicles financed grew by 17 per cent in the fiscal 2003-04 over fiscal 2002-03...

The Marketing Initiatives

SBI carried out various marketing initiatives to enhance its reach. They included. segregating and targeting existing high value customers,. cross sales of other products,. Setting up call centers and outbound sales force to secure new customers.. Plans were also made to utilize database marketing to pursue large and medium sized corporate, government and trade finance customers.. Database marketing was expected to draw increased revenue from cross selling, lower costs andincreased customer loyalty. SBI also introduced various other ways of reaching out to customers like extension of hours of work(SBI increased daily working hours by two hours and Sunday banking was introduced) and. Aggressive marketing through print and television media.


SBI`s Strategies in the current scenario

SBI have set up capacity in places where they are not very strong. Its time for them to follow overall SBI philosophy of planning new branches, given the huge untapped potential. Besides, this is also the best time to benefit from their past expansion, since there is a lot of trust in SBI. Brand SBI is very strong, while people may be generally cautious about some other brands. They can not only tap the potential better but can also provide a safe and transparent insurance alternative to the public. The bank is entering into many new businesses with strategic tie ups – Pension Funds, General Insurance, Custodial Services, Private Equity, Mobile Banking, Point of Sale Merchant Acquisition, Advisory Services, structured products etc – each one of theseinitiatives having a huge potential for growth.

Some of the strategies to cope with the current scenario are listed below:

• It is the part of SBI`s philosophy to open new branches .The Bank is forging ahead with cutting edge technology and innovative new banking models, to expand its Rural Banking base, looking at the vast untapped potential in the hinterland and proposes to cover 100,000 villages in the next two years. SBI is planning to hire 11,000 employees in the current fiscal. It is also focusing at the top end of the market, on whole sale banking capabilities to provide India’s growing mid / large Corporate with a complete array of products and services. It is consolidating its global treasury operations and entering into structured products and derivative instruments. Today, the Bank is the largest provider of infrastructure debt and the largest arranger of external commercial borrowings in the country. It is the only Indian bank to feature in the Fortune 500 list. The Bank is changing outdated front and back end processes to modern customer friendly processes to help improve the total customer experience. With about 8500 of its own 10000 branches and another 5100 branches of its Associate Banks already networked, today it offers the largest banking network to the Indian customer. The Bank is also in the process of providing complete payment solution to its clientele with its over 8500 ATMs, and other electronic channels such asInternet banking, debit cards, mobile banking, etc.

• Country’s largest lender, State Bank of India (SBI) has prepared a blueprint to go retail in its international operations. Such strategy would help the bank to promote its lead in syndication of loans in the overseas market, at a cheaper cost.The bank’s overseas operations have been instructed to thrust more on promoting retail banking locally, SBI is assessing that by opening more branches across foreign locations and promoting retail services by mobilising deposits at interest rates as low as 3-3.5%, the bank will be able to increase its operatingmargins by 250-300 basis points in overseas markets where syndication opportunities arise often.SBI is expected to open seven new branches over next eight months in the United Kingdom where it operates six branches currently. Also, SBI’s Washington office is expected to get upgraded as a full-fledged branch by December 2009 and plans are afoot to open more branches across North America under the control of California State chartered subsidiary of StateBank of India (California).


• In response to signals from the central bank, SBI have progressively reduced their PLR from 13.75% to 12.25% during the past few months in stages, and further softening in interest rates cannot be ruled out. SBI is introducing loan products at sub-PLR rates - in home loans at 8%, auto loans at 10%, special products for SMEs and... agriculture sector at 8%, but it may not be possible for them to reduce the interest rate beyond a certain point

• SBI is working on infrastructure sector projects, which has seen a growth of 26% in the current year. For the year 2008 the Rs 10,000 crores was sanctioned for the infrastructure projects while in the current year from April 08 to February 09 the amount sanctioned for the infrastructure project is Rs 13,000 crores,out of which project worth Rs 8000 crore is in pipeline. Despite of various viability issues the growth in this sector for SBI is been intact

• With market-linked products finding fewer takers, insurance companies are launching more “guaranteed” products to lure investors. The latest to join the bandwagon is SBI Life insurance with SBI Smart ULIP, a product that guarantees


SWOT analysis:

Strengths:

Brand name: SBI Bank has earned a reputation in the market over the period of time(Being the oldest bank in India tracing history back to 1806)

Market Leader: SBI is ranked at 380 in 2008 Fortune Global 500 list, and ranked 219 in 2008 Forbes Global 2000. With an asset base of $126 billion and its reach, it is a regional banking behemoth

Wide Distribution Network: Excellent penetration in the country with more than 10000 core branches and more than 5100 branches of associate banks (subsidiaries)

Diversified Portfolio: SBI Bank has all the products under its belt, which help it to extend the relationship with existing customer’s Bank has umbrella of products to offer their customers, if once customer has relationship with the bank. Some Products, which SBI Bank is offering are: Retail Banking Business Banking Merchant Establishment Services (EDC Machine) Personal loans & Car loans Insurance Housing Loans

Government Owned: Government owns 60% stake in SBI. This gives SBI an edge over private banks in terms of customer security

Low Transition Costs-SBI offers very low transition costs which attracts small customers. Continued effort to increase low cost deposit would ensure improvement in NIMs and hence

earnings

Weaknesses:

The existing hierarchical management structure of the bank, although strength in some respects, is a barrier to change

Though SBI cards are the 2nd largest player in the credit card industry, it has the highest non-performing assets ( NPAs) in the industry, which stand out to be at 16.28 % (Dec 2007)

Modernization: SBI lags with respect to private players in terms of modernization of its processes, infrastructure, centralisation, etc.

SBI is currently operating at a lowest CAR(8%). Insufficient capital may restrict the growth prospects of the bank going forward

Delay in technology up gradation could result in loss of market shares. Management indicated a likely pension shortfall on account of AS-15 to be close to Rs50bn Contribution of retail credit to total bank credit stood at 26%. Significant thrust on growing retail

book poses higher credit risk to the bank.


Opportunities:

Merger of associate banks with SBI: Merger of all the associate banks (like SBH, SBM, etc) into SBI will create a mega bank which streamlines operations and unlocks value

Planning to add 2000 branches and 3000 ATMs in 2008-2009. This will further increase its reach Increasing trade and business relations and a large number of expatriate populations

offers a great opportunity to expand on foreign soil Global expansion: SBI already has expanded globally and start its operations internationally

in 32 countries like Australia, Bangladesh, etc.... and has more plans of expansion in other global markets

Growing retail & SMEs thrust would lead to higher business growth Micro Finance: there is a lot of growth opportunity in the area of micro finance Strong economic growth would generate higher demand for funds pursuant to Higher Corporate demand for credit on account of capacity expansion

Threats:

Advent of MNC banks: Large numbers of MNC banks are mushrooming in the Indian market due to the friendly policies adopted by the government. This can increase the level of competition and prove a potential threat for the market share of SBI bank

Consumer expectations have increased many folds in last few years and the bank has not been responsive enough to meet them on time

Private banks have started venturing into the rural and semi-urban sector, which used to be the bastion of the State Bank and other PSU banks

Employee Strike: There was an employee strike in the year 2006 which disrupted SBI’s activities. This can be repeated in the future

Stiff competition, especially in the retail segment, could impact retail growth of SBI and Hence slowdown in earnings growth

Slow down in domestic economy would pose a concern over credit off-take thereby Impacting earnings growth

The changing interest rates and the changing policies of RBI.


Porters five forces theory:

1. Threat of competitors:

Top Performing Public Sector Banksa. Andhra Bankb. Allahabad Bankc. Punjab National Bankd. Dena Banke. Vijaya Bank

Top Performing Private Sector Banksa. HDFC Bankb. ICICI Bankc. AXIS Bankd. Kotak Mahindra Banke. Centurion Bank of Punjab

Top Performing Foreign Banksa. Citibankb. Standard Charteredc. HSBC Bankd. ABN AMRO Banke. American Express

2. Threat of new entrants: there have been many new entrants in banking sector like yes bank

3. Threat of substitutes: investors as a substitute can always invest into the capital markets instead of depositing in their capital in the bank.

4. Buying power of suppliers: changing policies and guidelines of RBI, interest rates, CRR and SLR maintained by the banks as per RBI norms.

5. Buying power of customers: changing scenarios, increasing and decreasing disposable incomes, other attractive options available to customers.


BCG theory: Cash Cow

There is a lot of growth potential for the banking industry because of increasing disposable income of customers, increasing working class, more volatility in other markets also increasing importance of savings and in this banking industry SBI has shown a growth rate of 13% with a 21 % increase in PAT standing to 62.1 cr in the FY 2008-09. Hence it can be concluded that SBI stands at cash cow in BCG matrix.

Bibliography

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www.wikepedia.org

www.sbi.co.in

http://www.sbi.co.in/

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http://www.scribd.com/

http://www.google.com/

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State Bank of India Strategy Analysis