Ashwani Bhatia, MD, State Bank of India (SBI), on Friday, said that a large part of the stress in the banking system has been done with now and he isn’t seeing any incremental stress.

He said, “From here onwards, as far as the sector is concerned, we think that all the cleanup that needed to be done has been done, and it is very much in place. We are generally not seeing any stress."

"Of course, recently, we also had the opportunity to go through the financial stability report of the Reserve Bank of India. They did talk about some stress buildup on account of COVID, looking at the trajectory of the virus at the moment. But as an industry, we think that things are pretty much in place for decent growth,” he added.

Sharing his insights on the growth pipeline from the public sector, Bhatia believes it to be strong. He also remains confident about the growth and earnings picture. According to him, most of the banks today are well provided for.

"As an industry, we think that things are pretty much in place for decent growth and this growth initially, of course, is going to come from the public sector or the government and there the pipeline is extremely strong,” he mentioned.

Bhatia added, “If you look at the real and nominal growth, we do feel confident about the economy and about the earnings potential of banks.”

On stress among sectors, Bhatia said that retail was never the space to be worried about. He said, “Retail has never given us the kind of stress that corporate can. The retail book is generally small ticket and the biggest part for all the banks, for that matter, would be on the housing side.”

On SBI’s YONO app, he said, "YONO has been a big success and about four years or around five years back, we were first off the block as far as our digital journey was concerned, and it has been doing extremely, extremely well."

Watch the video for the full interview.

Also Read: SBI expects loan growth of around 9% YoY in FY22, says chairman Dinesh Khara

First Published:Jan 7, 2022 11:55 AM IST