State Bank of India (SBI) said it is shifting some branch employees into sales and upselling roles as more banking transactions move to digital channels.
“A large number of transactions have moved to alternate channels. We are redeploying some of the workforce into sales and training our workforce in the branches for upselling,” SBI Chairman CS Setty said during the bank’s post-results earnings call earlier this month.
SBI said more customers are now opening accounts online, using mobile banking platforms, and buying different financial products through the bank’s digital ecosystem instead of visiting branches for routine work.
The bank said 66% of new savings accounts in FY26 were opened through Yono, SBI’s digital banking platform. SBI also said Yono crossed four crore registrations within three months of the launch of its new version, taking its total user base to around 10 crore customers.
He said that customers are purchasing a lot of products from SBI apart from deposit and loans. He said that SBI currently has an average of around three products per customer and wants to increase this number to five over time.
SBI’s strategy of using branch staff for sales purposes may be good, but there is a deeper reality that should not be ignored. While a large number of accounts were opened through YONO, many customers still visited branches and took help from staff to open their accounts.
As per reports, SBI aggressively used newly recruited clerical staff to increase downloads of its mobile app. Digitisation is good, but it is not fully automatic.
India is still not financially literate enough for customers to open accounts and carry out all banking transactions completely on their own without support from bank staff.
So, while people are using digital services, they are often doing so with the assistance of bank employees. This means the work remains manual and tedious for branch staff.
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