SBI group draws up uniform treasury operations policy

The State Bank of India (SBI) group is learnt to have worked out a uniform investment policy for its domestic treasury operations.

According to banking sources, the policy "" worked out by the SBI and its seven associate banks "" will take care of investments in equity and debt market.

Among other things, the newly formed guidelines pertain to uniform risk adjusted return on the investment portfolio across banks, credit to investment ratio, equity to investment ratio, debt to investment ratio, cut off limits in trading either in profit or loss etc.

Earlier, each associate bank used to take its own investment decision based on the approval of its board.

However, as the State bank group is moving towards an integrated treasury, an uniform policy will leave enough resources at its disposal so as to take advantage of the scale and opportunities, said sources.

Sources clarified that details of types and categories of equity or debt or any other instruments will, however, be the exclusive purview of individual board and a Chinese wall will be maintained in respective investment decisions. The objective of uniformity in investment limits and decisions is to increase the profitability of the entire state bank group.

Sources added that going forward, the group is likely to lay down uniform financial criteria for credit sanctioning and disbursement. This could be seen as a precursor to the merger of associate banks with State Bank of India, they added.

As collated from the annual reports, the total investment portfolio of seven associate banks and State Bank of India put together comes to around Rs 2,47,773 crore while total advances figure at around Rs 2,20,349 crore.

"With the uniform investment policy, the synergy of the total investment portfolio will definitely boost returns," said a banking source.

State Bank of India (SBI) and its seven Associate Banks, viz., State Bank of Bikaner & Jaipur (SBBJ), State Bank of Hyderabad (SBH), State Bank of Indore (SBInd), State Bank of Mysore (SBM), State Bank of Patiala (SBP), State Bank of Saurashtra (SBS) and State Bank of Travancore (SBT), as a group, are in the process of putting in place state of the art integrated treasury solution at its office in Bandra Kurla complex.

The integrated treasury will provide for straight through processing of front office and back office operations and settlement of transactions, accounting system based on Indian GAAP and US GAAP, capability of processing all kinds of transactions in equity, forex, debt, money market and derivatives market instruments.

Basel II norms as well as statutory compliance, risk weight for capital adequacy for different treasury products should also be possible, among other facilities.