State Bank of India (SBI) is an Indian multinational public sector bank and financial services statutory body headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra. SBI is the 45th largest bank in the world by total assets and ranked 221st in the Fortune Global 500 list of the world's biggest corporations of 2020, being the only Indian bank on the list.[11] It is a public sector bank and the largest bank in India[12] with a 23% market share by assets and a 25% share of the total loan and deposits market.[13] It is also the tenth largest employer in India with nearly 250,000 employees.[14][15][16] In 2023, the company’s seat in Forbes Global 2000 was 77.[17]
On 14 September 2022, State Bank of India became the third lender (after HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank) and seventh Indian company to cross the ₹5 lakh crore market capitalisation on the Indian stock exchanges for the first time.[18] The largest public lender in the country reached a milestone on April , 2024, when its market capitalisation surpassed ₹7 lakh crore, making it the second public sector undertaking (PSU) to do so, after Life Insurance Corporation.[19] The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has identified the SBI, HDFC Bank, and ICICI Bank as Domestic Systemically Important Banks (D-SIBs), which are often referred to as banks that are “too big to fail”.[20][21]
The bank descends from the Bank of Calcutta, founded in 1806 via the Imperial Bank of India, making it the oldest commercial bank in the Indian subcontinent. The Bank of Madras merged into the other two presidency banks in British India, the Bank of Calcutta and the Bank of Bombay, to form the Imperial Bank of India, which in turn became the State Bank of India in 1955.[22] Overall the bank has been formed from the merger and acquisition of more than twenty banks over the course of its 200-year history.[23][24] The Government of India took control of the Imperial Bank of India in 1955, with Reserve Bank of India (India's central bank) taking a 60% stake, renaming it State Bank of India.
On 16 August 2022, in an attempt to facilitate and support India's start-ups, SBI announced the launch of its first "state-of-the-art" dedicated branch for start-ups in Bengaluru.[25]
The roots of the State Bank of India lie in the first decade of the 19th century when the Bank of Calcutta (later renamed the Bank of Bengal) was established on 2 June 1806. The Bank of Bengal was one of three Presidency banks, the other two being the Bank of Bombay (incorporated on 15 April 1840) and the Bank of Madras (incorporated on 1 July 1843). All three Presidency banks were incorporated as joint stock companies and were the result of royal charters. These three banks received the exclusive right to issue paper currency till 1861 when, with the Paper Currency Act, the right was taken over by the Government of India. The Presidency banks amalgamated on 27 January 1921, and the re-organised banking entity took as its name Imperial Bank of India. The Imperial Bank of India remained a joint-stock company but without Government participation.
Under the provisions of the State Bank of India Act of 1955, the Reserve Bank of India, which is India's central bank, acquired a controlling interest in the Imperial Bank of India. On 1 July 1955, the Imperial Bank of India became the State Bank of India. In 2008, the Government of India acquired the Reserve Bank of India's stake in SBI to remove any conflict of interest because the RBI is the country's banking regulatory authority.