SBI hiring 12,000 people: Chairman

India’s largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) is in the process of hiring nearly 12,000 people who will be trained for various roles, including IT, says bank’s Chairman Dinesh Khara said on Thursday. The country’s largest lender had a total employee strength of 2,32,296 in FY24, down from 2,35,858 in the previous fiscal year.

SBI reported 18.18 per cent growth in March quarter consolidated net profit to Rs21,384.15 crore as against Rs18,093.84 crore in the year-ago period.

On a standalone basis, profit grew to Rs20,698.35 crore from Rs16,694.51 crore a year ago, the lender said. Consolidated net profit in fiscal year 2023-24 was up 20.55 per cent to Rs67,084.67 crore as against Rs55,648.17 crore in FY23.

“Around 11,000 to 12,000 employees are in the hiring process. These are general employees, but we actually are having a system where at our associate level and officers' level, around 85 per cent of them are engineers,” Khara said as the bank posted a 24 per cent jump in net profit at Rs 20,698 crore in the fourth quarter of FY24. In Q4 FY24, total income rose to Rs1.28 lakh crore from Rs1.06 lakh crore in the year-ago period, while operating expenses grew at a relatively slower rate at Rs30,276 crore from the year-ago period’s Rs29,732 crore.

The overall provisions nearly halved to Rs1,609 crore from Rs3,315 crore in the year-ago period. There was an improvement in gross non-performing assets ratio to 2.24 per cent as on March 31, 2024, as against 2.78 per cent in the year-ago period and 2.42 per cent at the end of December quarter.