Come fiscal 2003. When you log on to the State Bank of India's (SBI) website, you will be wished on your birthday or even on your wedding anniversary. The country's largest commercial bank is finally waking up to the need of extending courtesies to its consumers. It has started investing in customer relationship management (CRM) for its Internet banking facilities.
The bank now wants to be seen as a strong and yet nimble-footed financial intermediary which can compete with the new private sector banks.
SBI customers will be able to do balance enquiry, cheque book requisition, apply for drafts and also make a stop payment of cheque on the Net. By the end of March 31, 2002, the bank will also allow bill payment, credit card payment and inter-branch transfer of funds.
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At present, Internet banking is available at 110 branches across 10 cities. Though SBI, currently, has only 7,000 Internet banking users, it has set an ambitious target of touching one lakh customers by March 2002. By the time, it also wants to activate the corporate Internet banking facility. It will initially start off with account transfers and trade finance enquiries. For the Internet banking venture, SBI has tied up with Satyam Computer.
SBI is also putting in place a massive automated teller machine (ATM) strategy. The bank, currently, has 380 ATMs, of which 171 are networked. These 380 ATMs are spread over 102 cities across the country while the networked ATM are spread across 20 cities.
In the first week of December alone, the bank set up 24 ATMs. It has already signed an agreement with Indian Oil Company (IOC) for setting up ATMs at IOC petrol pumps and is in the process of tying up with other state-run oil companies such as Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd and Bharat Petroleum Corporation.
The bank has targeted setting up 1,000 ATMs across the country by the end of the fiscal. By March end, around 50 per cent of the ATMs across 60 centres will be networked.
The bank is going to follow the strategy of setting up off-site ATMs too.
Initially, of the total number of ATMs, about 25 to 35 per cent will be off-site. The bank is also tying up with insurance companies to offer customers the facility of directly paying premiums through the ATM network. In addition, SBI intends to tie up with utility companies for online bill payment.