Montreal: State Bank of India (SBI) expects to complete a deal that would reduce its stake in a life-insurance venture with BNP Paribas Cardif to 49% by the end of next year, chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya said.

SBI owns 74% of SBI Life Insurance Co., as the venture is called, and BNP Paribas Cardif holds the rest. The two will soon begin the process of valuing the company, so it’s too early to say how much the stake might fetch, and whether BNP Paribas Cardif will increase its ownership or an initial public offering (IPO) will take place, Bhattacharya said.

SBI Life Insurance has introduced ‘Connect Life’, a tablet-based service which gives choice to the customer while purchasing a policy in simple and effective steps.

It is adopting digitization of the entire process beginning with built in need analysis calculator that offers a customer the right products to choose from, filling the proposal form with a facility of paying premium and uploading necessary documents from the tablet.

Banking stocks are gaining across the exchanges after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) gave a nod to the banks to take control of debt-laden companies by existing debt into equity, if a debt restructuring fails to revive them within a timeframe.

In cases of restructuring of accounts, borrower companies are not able to come out of stress due to operational/ managerial inefficiencies despite substantial sacrifices made by the lending banks.

Mumbai: India’s largest lender, State Bank of India (SBI), managed to recover Rs.800-850 crore through a “loan resolution week” it organized from 25 to 31 May, a senior bank official said.

The loan resolution week was aimed at providing one-time settlement offers to defaulting borrowers to try and recover at least a part of loans that had turned bad.

Employees of State Bank of India's associate banks, including State Bank of Mysore, State Bank of Patiala, State Bank of Travancore and State Bank of Hyderabad, went on a one-day strike today to protest their merger with SBI permanently.

They also demanded filling up of vacancies, increasing the staff strength in the Housing loan section and extending the compassionate ground appointments to associate banks also.

Restructuring of Rs 119 bn faded an otherwise excellent quarter. Asset quality is much better than headline and much better than peers. Large corporate loans are still at risk. Cost curve is fully baked, to inflect sooner. High provision coverage and decent capital, it’s a story worth owning. We have cut earnings, and revise price target to Rs 360.

Better NIM and help from costs to boost core PPOP: Domestic NIM (net interest margin) improved by 6 basis points owing to interest income on income tax refunds (one-off), while foreign NIM improved 12bps sequentially. Better asset quality going forward should help NIM—low interest reversals.

SBI General Insurance posted a 33% growth in premium income for FY15. The insurer collected premiums of Rs 1,577 crore for the year ended March 31, 2015.

Bhaskar J Sarma, MD & CEO of SBI General Insurance, said that in the last financial year the insurer has emerged as the fastest growing company amongst major private general insurance companies.

The country’s biggest lender, State Bank of India (SBI), reported a 23 per cent increase in net profit to Rs 3,742 crore in the March quarter, fourth and final one (Q4) of 2014-15, higher than what the Street had estimated.

There was a four-fold increase in treasury gains, coupled with less of slippage to the bad loans category. Lower slippages also helped improve the net interest income by 14 per cent from the corresponding period a year before, to Rs 14,711 crore, despite a tepid 7.25 per cent growth in loans.

State Bank of India, the nation's top lender by assets, reported a better-than-expected 23% rise in quarterly profit on Friday and said its bad loan ratio declined sharply, sending its shares up by more than 5%.

The bank's gross bad loans ratio stood at 4.25% in its fourth quarter ended March, compared with 4.9% in the December quarter. The net non-performing loan ratio fell to 2.12% in the March quarter from 2.80% a quarter earlier.

The benchmark BSE Sensex today ended marginally lower by 28 points at 27,809.35 as blue-chips witnessed a mixed trend amid concerns over poor quarterly earnings and a diverse closing at other Asian markets.

Of 30 Sensex counters, 14 ended lower and 15 rose, while TCS settled unchanged.

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