Applying for job in SBI? Check your credit history

If you want to apply for a job at State Bank of India (SBI), any default on loans or credit card payment will render your ineligible.

SBI, which is in the process of recruiting Junior Associates (Customer Support & Sales) and Junior Agricultural Associates in clerical cadre, has stipulated that candidates with poor credit record will not be eligible for jobs at the country's largest lender.

According to an advertisement released recently by the public sector lender, candidates against whom there is or are adverse report regarding character and antecedents, moral turpitude are also not eligible to apply for the post.

SBI has advised aspirants to check their credit history with CIBIL before applying for posts in the bank.

Credit Information Bureau Ltd (CIBIL) collects and maintains records of an individual's payments pertaining to loans and credit cards.

"Candidates with record of default in repayment of loans/ credit card dues and/or against whose name adverse report of CIBIL or other external agencies are available are not eligible to apply for the post," SBI said.

The move prompted some bank employee unions to request the banks to exempt students who have availed education loans from such rules.

The development comes against the backdrop of lenders, including SBI, facing flack for mounting bad loans, including the one related to Vijay Mallya's Kingfisher Airline to which the SBI-led consortium extended loans now amounting to Rs 9,000 crore.

"While we are well aware of, and fully appreciate, the concern for the alarming proportion of NPA severely affecting the financial health of Banks, we think there would be a good number of candidates who have availed themselves of education loan from SBI or from any other Bank for acquiring requisite qualification/s necessary to become eligible to get hired by potential employers, including banks," Bank Employees Federation of India (BEFI) said in a statement.

"Such borrowers (those availing education loan) should not be equated and considered at par with "wilful defaulters" in the strict commercial sense of the term. It is very natural that this group of borrowers can start repaying their debts only when gainfully employed," it added.

"Closing the doors of employment to them would not only put them to hardship but would also adversely affect the prospects of recovering the debts by the concerned lending institutions," it said.

BEFI requested the SBI to look into the matter and advice the authorities concerned to add an appropriate rider to ensure the applicants who have availed education loan are not pushed out of the range of consideration for recruitment in SBI or in any other Government lender.

Photograph: PTI