SBI to enter wealth management business in phased manner this fiscal

India's largest lender, State Bank of India (SBI), plans to foray into the wealth management business in the current fiscal with a view to tap high networth clients, a top bank official said.

"We plan to introduce wealth management services in a phased manner in the current fiscal," SBI's chairman, OP Bhatt, told shareholders at its annual general meeting held in Mumbai today.

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 plans to deploy six lakh point-of-service (PoS) terminals during the next five years across rural and urban areas, Bhatt said.

This initiative will facilitate SBI's debit card acceptance pan-India, he said.

SBI will also shortly sign an agreement to operationalise a joint investment fund in collaboration with sovereign entities of Oman, the SBI chief said.

Presently, the SBI group has a network of 17,337 branches which includes 4,841 branches of its six associate banks.