SBI creates a foundation group to carry out its CSR activities

The nation's largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) has created a separate company, SBI Foundation, to carry out its massive CSR initiatives and hopes to get it "running" from July.

"We have been spending over 1% of our profit on CSR even before the new law on corporate social responsibility (CSR), mandating every company to spend 2% of its profit on such activities, came into effect. This is despite the fact that we are not legally bound to do so as we are not governed by the Companies Act.

"So, to streamline our CSR activities and better target our efforts, we've decided to create a new company called SBI Foundation. We hope to get the foundation running from July 1," general manager in-charge of CSR and change management at SBI, Vinod Pande told PTI.

Incidentally, July 1 is the foundation day of the bank, which was started as Bank of Calcutta in June 1806.

He said in fiscal 2014, the bank had spent Rs 115 crore on CSR, on a profit of Rs 10,891 crore, which was Rs 6 crore more than its 1% profit.

Pande said the SBI Foundation has already been registered under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013, which applies to non-profit companies or organisations and will be headquartered in Mumbai.

The foundation has already taken an office in the 22-storey Air India Tower in the city, where the bank has taken four floors.

When asked about management structure of the foundation, he said the bank chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya will be the chairman of the foundation and will have a full-time managing director and chief executive.

That apart, SBI has eight foreign banking subsidiaries -- State Bank of India California, SBI Canada, SBI Mauritius, Nepal SBI Bank, State Bank of India Botswana, Bank SBI Indonesia, Bank of Bhutan, and Commercial Indo Bank.

The bank also has seven non-banking subsidiaries -- SBI Capital Markets, SBI Funds Management, SBI Global Factors, SBI Cards & Payments Services, SBI DFHI, SBI General Insurance Company, SBI Pension Funds -- and three joint ventures -- SBI Life Insurance Company, SBI General Insurance Company and SBI-SG Global Securities, says the State Bank's website.

The State Bank and its five associate banks are registered under a separate Act of Parliament, the SBI Act.

Pande said once the foundation is registered and starts working, SBI and its five associates banks as well its arms will carry out their CSR work via the foundation.

Pande said he expects that the total outgo from the group will be more than Rs 200 crore this fiscal.

Except the associate banks, all of these subsidiaries will have to spend 2% of their profits on CSR as they are governed by the Companies Act, he said, adding that the bank has already received approval from the Reserve Bank for setting up the company. 

The new Companies Act mandates firms to mandatorily spend or set aside 2% of their net profit for CSR. But this is not applicable to other commercial banks as they are under the Banking Regulation Act, which does not mandate this.

Pande said the bank will be hiring some experts from outside through lateral hiring on contract basis (as the highly unionised SBI cannot hire people from outside on the rolls), but most of the staff will be from the bank on deputation.

The bank's CSR activities have been focused on women empowerment, child rights, skill development, education etc and will continue to be so, Pande added.