Does the new approach pose some practical difficulties in, for instance, motivating the staff?
Historically the group has been a pioneer in areas such as small scale lending and agriculture. Retail banking, as has been defined today, was not a thrust area in the past. As I have said we, in the State Bank group have been successful in computerising almost 13,000 branches, many of them in rural and semi-urban areas where even power availability cannot be taken for granted. We hope to computerise the entire network of the group soon. This has enhanced our ability to do more business and improve on customer service. For instance, the banking hours in the fully computerised branches have been extended by two hours. All these are bound to impact our customer service and profitability. Contrary to popular perception, SBI is not new to retail lending, which simply means lending to a non-corporate. We have had a long and successful exposure to many of areas of banking, which are today classified under retail banking. Today the accent has shifted to some newer products such as car loans,
