SBI's Massive Tech Overhaul: 2 Years to a Lightning-Fast Bank! Get Ready!

Banking/Finance

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Updated on 13 Nov 2025, 02:38 pm

State Bank of India (SBI), India's largest lender, has announced a significant initiative to overhaul its core banking infrastructure within the next two years. Ashwini Kumar Tewari, managing director (corporate banking & subsidiaries), outlined the bank's strategy at the Singapore FinTech Festival 2025, detailing a "four-axis strategy" focused on modernization.

This comprehensive plan includes upgrading the bank's hardware backbone by enhancing data centers and server infrastructure to manage increased transaction volumes and facilitate real-time analytics. SBI is also transitioning from proprietary Unix systems to Linux, an open-source operating system. This shift is intended to improve interoperability, allow easier integration with fintech platforms, and decrease reliance on traditional vendors, offering greater flexibility and security.

The bank is further implementing microservices, which involves breaking down large applications into smaller, independent components. This approach enhances agility, speeds up development cycles, and improves resilience for operations powered by AI and private cloud technologies.

Impact: This extensive modernization is poised to significantly boost SBI's operational efficiency, reduce maintenance costs, and accelerate its ability to deliver innovative digital services. Investors can expect improved service quality, faster transaction processing, and a strengthened competitive edge for SBI in the evolving financial landscape. The rating for this impact is 8/10.

Difficult Terms: * **Legacy Systems**: Older computer systems, programming languages, or software that are still in use but are difficult and expensive to maintain or update. * **Open-Source Migration**: Moving from proprietary software (where the source code is owned and controlled) to software whose source code is freely available for use, modification, and distribution. * **FinTech Platforms**: Financial technology companies and their platforms that use technology to offer financial services in new ways. * **Microservices Implementation**: Designing an application as a collection of small, independent services that communicate with each other, rather than a single, large application. * **Real-time Analytics**: Analyzing data as it is generated or received, allowing for immediate insights and actions. * **Hollowization**: Based on context, simplifying and streamlining complex systems or processes by removing redundancies or non-essential parts to improve efficiency and agility.