India is going through a remarkable transformation. Ease of doing business, mega tax reforms, financial inclusion, universal health insurance, mass digitalisation, infrastructure development and the growth of manufacturing and service sectors are just some of the change enablers. More so, the country currently enjoys prudent fiscal conditions, stable inflation, growing trade and steady employment creation to support sustainable GDP growth. Not surprisingly, the country is in the spotlight globally.

Focused on value creation, SBI has made strategic investments to strengthen its core businesses. Over the last 5 years, we have undertaken several initiatives in reshaping SBI into a technologically advanced universal banking institution, with optimised operational efficiency and with ‘delighting customers’ as its strategic driving priority.

Today, these transformative initiatives have made SBI highly competitive and relevant to its diverse base of customers. With this backdrop, we are now ideally positioned for delivering superior value creation through sustainable growth. We plan to fulfil this by enhancing our operations to the highest levels of excellence - be it lending performance; improving our asset quality; perking up our profitability; and ultimately hastening the pace of capital generation and, thus, wealth creation.

To power these efforts, we have made our own infrastructure extra robust, in terms of establishing a comprehensive monitoring and control framework, and building on a large talent pool of committed workforce. To support this, we have re-engineered our internal processes for improving our risk management and growth velocity. We are also constantly recalibrating our lending strategy to bolster the quality of our loan book.

Technology advancements are continuously being implemented both towards back-end processes, as well as robust and efficient customer service delivery channels. At the same time, our commitment to highest standards of risk management, ethics and governance safeguard our stakeholder’s interests at all times. Through this upgraded framework, we have laid a strong foundation for sustained long-term growth, and are gradually moving towards a more transparent, cost-competitive, and innovation- driven organisation.

We are beginning to see clear signs of benefits from the merger with our associate banks, having unified multiple operations to match the highest standards, and stimulating superior synergistic performance. Going forward, an enhanced scale of operations, sharing of best practices and the rationalisation of common costs are expected to result in meaningful savings. This will further strengthen our mission for becoming an enduring value creator.

We are optimistic about the future. The success of the largest ever QIP floated in India by SBI, is a strong testimony to the faith reposed in us by our investors and to our capital raising capability overall. The QIP enjoyed wide participation by diverse sets of quality investors. Furthermore, the IPO of SBI Life, led to significant value discovery and is a strong indication of the Bank’s ability to incubate and nurture future industry leaders with a strong potential for value creation in the times ahead.

The Bank is deeply committed to contributing to society at large. We will continue to serve as a trusted partner to all our stakeholders by responsibly providing financial services that enable growth and economic progress for people of all income groups. During major transformational reforms seen in the past, such as the Government’s demonetisation measures and the tax reforms through the introduction of GST, the Bank has emerged as a resilient player on a steady path of quality growth.