State Bank of India (SBI) is in the process of establishing Retail Asset Credit Processing Centres, facilities focused on loan processing areas in rural and semi-urban areas across Telangana. Till now they were confined to urban areas. “Each of them would be linked to 6 to 8 branches in a radius of 15 km.,” SBI Hyderabad Circle Chief General Manager J. Swaminathan said.
A hub and spoke model, the RACP centre with its team of staff dedicated to loan processing is expected to allow branches to focus better on other banking operations.
From mid-May 34 RACP centres for rural and semi-urban branches have been set up. The plan is to have 108 RACPs this fiscal, and to bring under their fold all the 680 RUSU branches of bank across Telangana, the senior banker said. The SBI has 1,144 branches across the State.
Explaining the logic, he said, “We don’t want every branch to do the same work (pertaining to loan processing).” The RACP would do their work. “The branch will only be the delivery point, it will give money, receive money,” Mr. Swaminathan said, adding the decision on RACP is a nation-wide initiative of the SBI. It will adopt standardised operating procedure for loan processing and also pool resources. On the people and resources required, he said the staff for now was being managed through redeployment while the system infrastructure is from the annual spend on IT.
