Country’s largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) will hire 16,000 employees in current financial year and will hire similar number of employees each fiscal to aid its business expansion plans and beef up its customer service, chairman CS Setty told businessline in an interaction. The bank also intends to fill “white spaces” by opening 200-300 branches this fiscal, he said.
The employee hiring and physical network expansion moves are in-line with the lender’s plan to double its business size to ₹200 lakh crore in 6-7 years from ₹100 lakh crore in Q2FY26.
“For our network expansion, we always look for white spaces. You will be surprised that despite our large network, we may still not be present in an upcoming colony or a township. We don’t want to miss this opportunity, and will keep adding branches. Similarly in ATMs, we have very strong analytical model. We see where the footfalls are growing beyond certain number and add ATMs accordingly,” Setty said.
“Today we have very clear visibility of micro markets, where we need to set up a branch and ATM. We will be adding 200-300 branches in current fiscal. Our recruitment process is almost getting completed. Around 16,000 new employees will join the bank in current fiscal. We add these number of people almost each year,” he added.
As of March 2025, SBI’s workforce stood at 2.36 lakh employees across Officers, Associates and Subordinate Staff roles. Women employees accounted for around 28 per cent of the overall employee base. SBI’s employee cost rose 11 per cent year-on-year (y-o-y) to ₹36,837 crore in H1FY26.
Outsourcing subsidiary
Further, the bank aims to use its wholly owned subsidiary State Bank Operations Support Services (SBOSS) in rural and semi-urban areas. The bank is using it to help government scheme beneficiaries, sourcing their applications in the agriculture area and small businesses and use this support subsidiary to monitor over 60,000 ATMs.
SBI is calling OSS employees who monitor the ATMs as “ATM mitras.”
“These will be local residents who will monitor ATM availability, maintenance and cleanliness, among other activities. The RBI has permitted more than 20 activities which can be outsourced to these workers. We are going to deploy 6,000 people across branches for floor coordination,” Setty said.
Published on December 9, 2025
