State Bank of India reported during its Q2 FY27 earnings call on 3 November 2026 that digital re-KYC and the Seva Sarathi platform together save around 50,000 employee man-hours every day, freeing branch staff for higher-value work.
Since the digital re-KYC programme was launched in June 2026, more than 1.2 crore re-KYC updates have been completed through digital channels, cutting branch intervention by over 50%, the bank told analysts. Re-KYC refers to the periodic update of a customer’s identity and address records required under RBI norms, a process traditionally handled at the branch. SBI plans to redirect the freed-up employee capacity toward customer engagement, relationship management and business generation, management said on the call.
“Digital initiatives like re-KYC program and Seva Sarathi have led to significant productivity gains, saving 50,000 man-hours per day,” the bank stated during the Q2 FY27 earnings call, as recorded in the full earnings call transcript. The disclosures accompanied a record ₹23,038 crore quarterly net profit and a gross NPA ratio at a 24-year low of 1.39%.
SBI is India’s largest public-sector lender, with a workforce of 2,45,131 employees as of March 2026 and total staff expenses of ₹65,724 crore in FY26, more than half the bank’s operating expenditure. The scale makes any productivity shift material: 50,000 hours a day is roughly equivalent to 6,250 eight-hour workdays freed from routine KYC work each day. Seva Sarathi is SBI’s internal servicing platform used by branch staff for customer-facing workflows.
Public-sector banks across India have been pushing digital re-KYC, straight-through processing and self-service channels to reduce branch load as hiring plans stay measured. SBI’s own staff strength reached a five-year high in FY26, and its Q2 FY27 disclosures place the focus for incremental capacity on relationship and business functions rather than routine servicing.
