The Hindu Business Line : SBI gears up to clear backlog

Branches and ATMs of State Bank of India saw serpentine queues on Monday as customers lined up to complete their transactions such as withdrawal of salary and pension and payment of monthly home loan instalments and utility bills.

ATMs were re-filled today and some branches remained open for extra hours as employees cleared the piled up work.

To facilitate customer transactions, some branches will remain open on Tuesday (April 11), though it is a bank holiday. These would be branches that have a large number of individual salary accounts, pension accounts or branches located in army units, said a senior official of the bank.

"Our immediate concern is the aged pensioners and small depositors who may be the sole earning members in their families. We have left it to the respective regional heads to decide which branches to open, depending on the type of customers," said the official.

Corporate transactions were not affected much as the clients could conduct their business through the associate banks, said the official.

"The corporate customers had huge money at stake. So, we had arranged for their transactions through the associate banks," he said.

For seven days, 9,000 branches were shut as two-lakh employees stayed away from work demanding an increase in pension.

The strike was called off on Sunday night after the government agreed to meet some of their demands.

Though there is no official comment, yet, about the exact hit the bank will take due to the rise in pension payment, the amount could be of a large proportion, said a banking analyst. "The exact amount is not known. But looking at the quantum of the payout, it seems the hit for the bank might be huge. Also, the tone-down in the demand by the union is not very significant," he said.

On Monday, the SBI stock closed at Rs 963.45, down from Friday's close of Rs 978.55, a fall of 1.54 per cent.

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