Large banks need to develop skill sets to assess emerging industries, says SBI chief CS Shetty

State Bank of India chairman CS Shetty

State Bank of India’s newly-appointed chairman CS Shetty has said the skill set required to identify emerging industries is still lacking in the country.

Even though these new industries such as electric vehicle battery developers and  hydrogen fuel makers fulfill their funding requirements from overseas, large domestic banks still have a crucial role to play, Shetty said during a panel discussion at the CII Financing Summit 3.0 on September 2.

The public sector bank, which has the largest project financing department in the country, still lack skills to assess the emerging areas, Shetty, who took over as the SBI chairman on August 28, said.

“… Large banks are expected to play a big role in infrastructure financing. We find that despite our expertise the skillset required to identify the emerging areas are still lacking,” he said.

To solve that, the SBI chief said they are looking to set up a centre of excellence and collaborate with multilateral development banks and large multinational banks.

Moreover, he said that the fund requirements of micro, small and medium enterprises have also gone up and a bank such as SBI should think about 'hand holding' them.

"A large bank like SBI should not only be looking to finance MSMEs... we need to see whether we can hand hold them in terms of governance and technology."