SBI gets new Chairman, RBI keeps rates unchanged

Rajnish Kumar, chairman, State Bank of India (SBI)

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26 Aug, 2025 12:21

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Even it being a truncated week with October 2 as public holiday for Gandhi Jayanti, the Banking sector this week saw two major news — one that of the RBI announcing a status quo in its key interest rate decision and the second that country’s biggest lender State Bank of India (SBI) got its new Chairman in Rajnish Kumar as its bids farewell to its first woman head Arundhati Bhattacharya after four years at the helm. In another insolvency news, Reliance Communications (RCom) called off the merger with Aircel.

SBI gets new Chairman

SBI bids farewell to Arundhati Bhattacharya. A look at what SBI’s first woman chief leaves behind as her legacy.

Mumbai: State Bank of India Chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya during CII's Governance Series in Mumbai on Wednesday. PTI Photo Mitesh Bhuvad(PTI3_15_2017_000052B)

The first chief of the state-owned bank who handled the biggest merger to date, Bhattacharya also rolled out a wider digital platform on which the bank operations could be synchronized. She made the bank a woman-friendly organisation. That is not all, she leaves SBI after making the bank find a mention in the list of top 50 banks in the world.

On the last day of her four-year term at the bank on October 6, Arundhati Bhattacharya, outgoing Chairman of State Bank of India (SBI) spoke about her unfinished agenda, said: "We have been through quite a turbulent time… (The bank’s) credit growth is not where we wanted it to. So that's an unfinished agenda."

Rajnish Kumar as new SBI chief

On similar lines a day before, her successor and the newly appointed Chairman Rajnish Kumar said told the media that reviving credit growth and resolution of stressed assets will be his top priority. Kumar said SBI will present (in 30 days) a blueprint for the next 36 months, especially on their Human Resource transformation that SBI is planning

RBI policy

After two-day deliberations on Tuesday and Wednesday, the monetary policy committee (MPC) under the chairmanship of Reserve Bank of India Governor, Urjit Patel, kept the repo rate or key policy rate unchanged at 6 percent.

Highlights from the policy announcement:

rbi_76330789

A central bank study group also put out a new report to improve transmission of policy rates into lending rates. It suggested that the lending rates should be linked to three external benchmark rates in a time-bound manner.

The group has suggested linking lending rates to three external benchmark rates — Treasury Bill rates, the CD (certificates of deposit) rates and the RBI’s policy repo rate – by April 1, 2018 to improve monetary transmission

The Reserve Bank also initiated a few other measures to improve policy interest rate transmission, on banking regulation and supervision and measures to improve financial and securities markets.

P2P lending

The banking regulator also announced guidelines for peer to peer or P2P lenders which are growing in the fintech space and required to come under scrutiny.

P2P lenders can now cumulatively lend a maximum of Rs 10 lakh and individually have an exposure to a borrower of not more than Rs 50,000, as per the guidelines released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

RCom divorces Aircel

Anil_Ambani

Reliance Communications' aborting the plan to merge with Aircel is credit negative for the Anil Ambani-led firm as it was crucial to pare debt, Moody's Investors Service. Further, RCom also withdrew its plans to demerge its tower business, as per reports. The beleaguered company was pursuing a Rs 11,000 crore tower deal with Canada's Brookfield.