After the huge FCNR (B) liquidity boost for banks, SBI Chairman Setty hopes everyone will be more responsible in lending 

The huge fund inflows that the banking sector has seen via FCNR (B) deposits is expected to take around 3-4 months for full deployment, according to C. S. Setty, the chairman of State Bank of India. More importantly, he is hopeful that the industry awash with liquidity now will be more responsible in lending.

The special window announced by the Reserve Bank of India in June offering a concessional swap facility for fresh foreign currency non-resident [FCNR (B)] deposits, overseas foreign currency borrowings (OFCB) and external commercial borrowing (ECB) saw an overwhelming response, with banks seeing record inflows of over $127 billion from FCNR (B) deposits alone, leading to a huge liquidity surplus in the system. 

On Wednesday, Axis Bank MD and CEO Amitabh Chaudhary had warned that as banks look to deploy the funds, it could potentially lead to some abnormal lending, although he hoped it wouldn't be the case.

When asked an opinion on the concerns, Setty said he didn't think it would be the case.

"I think everybody will be more responsible in lending," said Setty, during the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai.

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On Thursday, Setty addressed a gathering on agentic AI and the future of banking.

Agentic AI gives us an opportunity to extend personalised financial assistance to hundreds of millions of customers across every stage of their financial growth, he said. But the democratisation and affordability of financial intelligence will be key so that it reach more and more people, he added.

"One of the very important points is how do you make high-cost computing currently available, particularly on the Agentic AI, Generative AI side, more affordable. When you want to use in scale, you can't have the high-cost models available now. How do we design AI models and AI computing power for India that is affordable, is going to be an important element," said Setty.

With agentic AI, a significant number of financial activities will become increasingly automated and employees can then devote more of their time and capability towards problem-solving and deeper customer engagement, he noted.

Setty also stressed on the need for a human-in-the-loop approach. While data-heavy activities can be handled by AI, complex high risk financial decisions can continue to receive appropriate human oversight, he said. 

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"The same capability that gives AI its enormous power can amplify the consequences of a mistake. This is why I believe trust cannot be added, but should be embedded in our agentic AI models," pointed Setty.

SBI itself will be focusing on three major areas of adoption of agentic AI - on the customer engagement and hyperpersonalisation; on the employee side, to improve productivity and simplify the process; and at the risk management side, the productive risk management deployment of agentic AI, he said.

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