State Bank of India plans to foray into the wealth management business in the current fiscal with a view to tapping high net worth clients.
“We plan to introduce wealth management services in a phased manner in the current fiscal,” bank Chairman O. P. Bhatt told shareholders at the bank's annual general meeting held here on Wednesday.
The bank is also scouting for a global partner for its merchant acquiring business which it plans to run under a separate company.
“It is proposed to conduct the merchant acquiring business under a separate company with an experienced and reputed global partner,” he said.
The public sector lender also planned to deploy six lakh point-of-service (PoS) terminals during the next five years across rural and urban areas, Mr. Bhatt said. This initiative would facilitate SBI's debit card acceptance pan-India, he said.
SBI would also shortly sign an agreement to operationalise a joint investment fund in collaboration with sovereign entities of Oman, the SBI chief said.
At present, the SBI group has a network of 17,337 branches which includes 4,841 branches of its six associate banks.