The Hindu Business Line : SBI building ‘SME cadre’

Two years after the roll out of ‘Project Parivartan’, a HR programme targeted at clerical staff and officers, State Bank of India has initiated yet another drive, and this time it aims to build an ‘SME cadre’.

Under the ‘SME Gyan Chadha’ programme, the bank is offering specialised training to over 1,000 officers, including probationary and trainee officers (with less than five years service in the grade).

They are being trained at the bank’s apex training centres at Hyderabad and Gurgaon.

“We would have trained these officers by the first week of June,” Mr J. Chandrasekaran, Chief General Manager, SBI (Local Head Office), Chennai, said.

Asked the need for such an exercise, Mr Chandrasekaran said: “In the SME business, our issue was capability. So, we chalked out a programme to address this issue by imparting specialised, intense training. The initial training is for one week, but it is to be an on-going exercise,” he said.

SBI has 17 SME-specialised branches in the Chennai circle. It plans to add four-five in this circle this fiscal.

“This is not our only model. We are trying to increase our Relationship Managers for Medium Enterprises,” he said.

The bank has engaged 40 relationship managers for SMEs, but Mr Chandrasekaran perceives the need for another 70-80 considering the number of SME accounts and their requirements.

Despite the slowdown, the bank managed to achieve a credit growth of 25-30 per cent in the SME business, he said and added that the total SME outstanding stood at Rs 8,090 crore (Chennai Circle) and the mid-corporate exposure at Rs 17,043 crore as on March-end.

“We have restructured 1,723 SME accounts and the outstanding was Rs 700 crore,” he said. “It is not the interest rate that is killing the SME sector today, but access to money, disruption and short supply of power, labour and the lack of power to make quick and timely decisions. So, we are sensitising the SMEs,” he said in reply to a question.

According to him, rating agencies such as SMERA and ICRA did not understand the SME business. “SBI, therefore, is in the process of creating a ‘Scoring model’ within the bank for SMEs with total assistance of up to Rs 5 crore,” he said.

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