Financial institute with highest support to power sector - State Bank of India

The State Bank of India is the largest bank in India and with the merger of its subsidiaries, it has surely entered the new orbit. The State Bank of India is India's largest commercial bank in terms of assets, deposits, branches, number of customers and employees. To put the figures in perspective, it has 0.42 billion customer base, with 22,414 branches and 59,541 ATMs. Apart from this, it has a market share of 22.84 per cent in deposits and 19.92 per cent in terms of advances.

Operational Performance
Due to higher base led by demonetisation, the aggregate deposits of the bank grew at a modest rate of 4.68 per cent to Rs 27 trillion from the previous year level of Rs 25 trillion. The growth in aggregate deposits is mainly due to the increase in savings bank deposits, which grew by 7.88 per cent YoY and deposits from the foreign offices (grew by 17.07 per cent). The bank has improved its CASA ratio to 45.68 per cent, an improvement of 128 bps from 44.40 per cent last year.

Retail Loans Drives Credit Growth
The gross advances of the bank crossed the Rs 20 trillion mark and grew at 4.91 per cent to the level of Rs 20.48 trillion by March 2018 from the previous year level of Rs 19 trillion. Retail segments (Per, SME and Agri) now constitute 57.5 per cent of the domestic loan book (Rs 17 trillion). Much of the growth in advances came from Per Retail segments, including home loans and auto loans. Overall, Per Retail loans grew by 13.55 per cent in FY2018, which is in line with the bank's strategy of growing more aggressively in this segment.

Profitability
The year 2017-18 was a difficult year as far as the net profits are concerned. The main contributing factors being increase in loan loss provisions, mark to market losses on the government securities and provisions and payments to employees. The operating profit and net interest income of the bank remained flat at Rs 595.11 billion and Rs 748.54 billion, respectively in FY2018 on the back of reduction in MCLR and base rate and continued asset quality stress. The non-interest and fee income registered a growth of 4.61 per cent and 10.51 per cent, respectively in FY2018. Recovery in the written-off accounts registered a robust growth of 34.56 per cent and the trend is expected to continue. The staff expenses declined by 2.34 per cent during FY2018. While 3,211 new employees joined the bank due to the retirement of 18,973 employees, the overall staff strength declined by 15,762 during the year.

Asset Quality
Gross NPAs of the Bank increased from Rs 1 trillion as on March 2017 to Rs 2 trillion as on March 2018, whereas Net NPA increased from Rs 969.78 billion to Rs 1.10 trillion during the same period. Despite the change in RBI's policy for recognising NPA's, the slippage ratio in FY18 has declined to 4.85 per cent from 5.78 per cent in FY17. Overall the gross NPA ratio stood at 10.91 per cent and the Net NPA ratio at 5.73 per cent at the end of FY2018.