SBI plans to roll out single-window KYC for all products by March

Mumbai: State Bank of India plans to launch a centralized know your customer (KYC) portal by the end of FY26 to make the onboarding process smoother across its product lines. This move will allow customers to complete KYC processes once, giving them access to all products and services without the need for repeated verifications.

“We will provide KYC as a service,” chairman CS Setty said on the sidelines of a conference to announce the bank’s Q2FY26 results.

SBI’s move comes amid growing calls to simplify the KYC process, which has long been seen as a compliance burden even though it is necessary to prevent fraud and update customer data.

Re-KYC requirement is more common in case of public sector banks with large volumes of basic accounts and Jan Dhan accounts; This often inconveniences users and carries the risk of account restrictions.

Currently, an SBI customer has to complete the KYC process or re-KYC every time he buys a new product.

“This is not just about SBI’s KYC process, which itself is cumbersome. We realized that there are 15 different ways of doing KYC in SBI alone. So we actually want to revise, revamp our own processes and in this process we need to have some discussions with regulators and the government in terms of improving the ecosystem,” he said.

The KYC revamp is a part of SBI’s broader initiative titled ‘Project Saral’ to simplify eight important and impactful areas identified by the bank.

Last month, the president said at an event that the KYC process was one of the biggest challenges for both banks and customers and called on policymakers, fintech and technology developers to simplify the process.

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Setty said the long-awaited launch of the bank’s second-generation digital application is also approaching its final stages.

“Unless some issues arise, we’re aiming for a commercial launch this quarter, I think we’re planning for the current quarter,” Setty said, adding that the new app will be much more intuitive and will be powered by “completely revamped” technology to offer customers an omni-channel experience.

The bank has 9.3 crore mobile banking customers and 10 crore internet banking customers. Setty said the main goal is to have a common experience across platforms, although some use both.

“We currently have 9.3 crore customers, our target is to have at least 20 crore mobile banking customers. The platform has been built from the very beginning to cater to this 20 crore customer volume, which means you need to have robust technology, high availability, as well as highly intuitive customer journeys.”

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Setty said the initial focus will be on migrating existing users before moving on to new sign-ups, reflecting the prevalence of smartphones in the geography. He said almost 70% of SBI’s customer base uses smartphones.

The bank had earlier said that the revamped app will offer services in 15 languages and offer broader-based products, especially for farmers and MSMEs, as well as branch and community customers.

Setty said despite the digital push, SBI will continue to expand its physical footprint with 450-500 new branches in FY26. The bank has around 500 million customers and around 1.6 lakh touchpoints.

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