Credit demand broad-based, see 14-15% loan growth in FY27: SBI Chairman 

State Bank of India, the country's largest lender, is seeing broad-based demand for loans and expects a credit growth of 14-15% in the current financial year ending March 2027.

Deposit growth, on the other hand, is seen at around 10-11% this year, with traction coming from FCNR (B) deposits. It has already seen inflows of around $6 billion and expects to overall mobilise $10 billion in FCNR (B) deposits through the special swap window announced by Reserve Bank of India, which closes on September 30.

"We always align credit growth, at least in our guidance, to nominal GDP. If we go by the GDP estimates, and our own internal house view is that nominal GDP would be around 12 per cent, which means that 2-3 per cent over that nominal GDP has always been our guidance," C S Setty, Chairman of SBI, said on August 7.

He noted that credit growth remained broad-based across all major business segments in the April-June quarter.

"Our RAM (retail, agri and MSME) portfolio continued its steady expansion with the year-on-year growth of 18.2%. Our overseas operations delivered healthy growth in advances having grown at 21.38% in rupee terms, underlining the diversified nature of our franchise," according to Setty.

In the wake of El Niño and its predicted impact on monsoon this year, how rural consumption plays out, is going to be a key monitorable, said Setty. However, he doesn't see much stress emerging due to El Niño and pointed heavy rain in catchment areas, particularly Maharashtra, was benefiting kharif crops now, even in the south, where there had earlier been deficient rainfall.

On the gap in credit, deposit growth rates, Setty pointed there was excess liquidity in the portfolio; as of June 30, 2026, there was excess SLR (statutory liquidity ratio) of ₹3.09 lakh crore. The FCNR (B) flows have helped further augment it to ₹4 lakh crore. This was in addition to the strong growth in retail term and CASA (current account and savings account deposits), he noted.

AI Investments 

SBI is deploying artificial intelligence across areas like coding and cyber security management on the technology side. It is also looking to improve employee productivity through AI-enabled processes, Setty said.

AI is also being deployed on the customer side, for instance, contact centre AI enablement, and it is also contemplating agentic AI deployment.

"We will be using AI extensively in fraud prevention, proactive risk management and anti-money laundering. These are all high volume activities in the back office," he added. Its total cheque processing is moving to gen AI-based tools, work which is currently manually done.

Even as its AI usage is growing, Setty noted that there was no change in recruitment of general bankers. He noted that the bank had recruited 1,500 IT specialists last year.

SBI also has a strong data science workforce, which he said is being trained to become AI specialists, he added.

Strong Q1 growth

SBI reported a net profit of ₹21,121 crore in April-June, up 10.2% from a year ago. Net interest income rose near 15% to ₹46,992 crore. The lender's gross advances grew 18.6% in Q1 to ₹50.47 lakh crore and deposits were up 9.7% to around ₹60.06 lakh crore.