India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government promoted Rajnish Kumar as chairman of State Bank of India, the nation’s largest lender, according to a statement from the government.
Kumar, who has headed State Bank’s domestic lending business since November 2015, will take on the new role on October 7, a statement posted on a government website showed yesterday. The 59-year-old Kumar, who joined the state-run lender in 1980, will be chairman for three years.
The new head of the lender will need to focus on the bank’s bad-loan ratio, which surged to the highest in at least 11 years after it posted a smaller-than-estimated profit in the three months to June. In her four years at the helm, current head Arundhati Bhattacharya has overseen a merger with smaller lenders, raised $2.3bn of additional capital this year and listed a life insurance unit. State Bank accounts for more than a fifth of India’s banking assets.
State Bank broke into the ranks of the world’s top 50 banks by assets in April after its merger with five smaller units and Bharatiya Mahila Bank Ltd. The enlarged lender won’t grow its network of about 24,000 branches for another two years and will, instead, focus on consolidating its operations and strengthening its digital-banking initiatives, Bhattacharya said.