SBI to turn YONO platform into financial services platform: Rajnish Kumar

The subsidiary will get its revenues streams by providing services to financial sector players, says lender

State Bank of India (SBI) plans to hive off its digital banking platform You Only Need One (YONO) into a subsidiary and offer services to financial sector players for a fee.

SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar said while the group’s needs are huge, the bank plans to make it into a subsidiary and develop capabilities with adequate security aspects for providing services to others. This is the vision of the bank for the next two years.

Asked about monetising the platform with listing on the bourses, he said first a subsidiary will be formed and later a decision on going public can be taken.

YONO is a profitable platform but no one gets to know its valuation because it sits within the bank.

SBI had launched the YONO platform in November 2017. Its revenue streams could get stablished while working as a platform for services to other financial sector players, especially small finance banks and cooperative banks, Kumar told Business Standard.

The bank is also working on creating a business-to-business (B2B) platform for bills receivables, called ‘Bharat Draft’. It will have all the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) registered.

In July, SBI had said it planned to double the registration figures for YONO in the next six months from its base of 24 million. The Covid-19 pandemic has shifted focus to the contactless digital banking channel. 

SBI YONO has achieved sizeable growth through the digital channel by increasing share of wallet and acquiring at scale. SBI would further strengthen its platform through new product offerings like end-to-end home loans, pre-approved car loans and personal gold loans, Kumar added. The YONO apps has surpassed the landmark of 51 million downloads. It witnesses five million logins per day along with over 4,000 daily disbursals of personal loans.

The bank recently launched the YONO Global app in the UK and Mauritius. SBI plans to cover nine more countries by the end of 2020.

On June 30, SBI gave YONO a brick-and-mortar presence. The bank launched YONO branches in Navi Mumbai, Indore and Gurugram.