PSU bankers paid very poorly, says State Bank of India chief

Bankers are paid poorly in India as compared to their counterparts elsewhere in the world, she said.

State Bank of India chief Arundhati Bhattacharya lamented on Thursday that bankers are paid very poorly in India compared to their counterparts elsewhere in the world, especially those working for the public sector ones.

There is an urgent need to provide better remuneration to attract good talent, she said.

"Let me start with income of banking professionals in India.

“Here, 70 per cent of the banks are in the public sector and they are paid very very poorly," she said at the Delhi Economic Conclave.

There is an urgent need to improve the quality of board members by offering them suitable remuneration, the SBI chief said.

"We are blessed in that. SBI has invariably had a very good board. But that may not be true for the other banks.

“One of the reasons is low remuneration," she said.

"If you are trying to attract best in the field, you have to pay well. We must insist on inducting those people into the board who have sufficient hands-on experience in planning and execution," she said.

Bhattacharya's comments come about a week after PSU bank employee unions went to a four-day relay strike to press for early revision of wages.

With regard to governance, she said P J Nayak Committee has clearly laid out a roadmap as to how governance can be taken forward.

"I believe the government is looking at it."

Talking about changing regulations in tune with the present system, Bhattacharya said India has over 60 Acts and multiple rules and regulations that govern the financial system.

"Many of the laws date back to 1950s and 1960s.

“Banking regulations came into being before the birth of automated teller machines, credit cards, Internet banking, investment advisory, private banking, mutual funds, . . . whole lot of other things," she said.

"These acts have been amended to keep pace with time. But the legal foundations have remained more or less static. As a result, the framework stays complex and inconsistent," she said.

"Occasionally, it is also open to regulatory arbitrage. Therefore, we need to look at these things holistically and move the laws to be in tandem with times," she added.

With regard to improving governance, Bhattacharya pitched for a good whistle blower policy with an objective to protect the innocent and punish the guilty.

"In the area of governance, it is very important to nurture and have a good whistle blower policy to ensure that people who actually give the right information are properly rewarded and those who misuse the system are penalised," the SBI chief said.

"We must free the public sector banks of the disgruntled and of the anonymous and superfluous complaints that they use.

“These complaints very often contain allegations that are false," she added.

Good people, who have taken strong decisions, should not be victimised on the basis of false allegations, Bhattacharya said.

Image: Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairperson of SBI. Photograph: Kind courtesy, SBI