The State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest lender, has set an ambitious goal to complete the modernization of its core banking infrastructure within the next two years. Speaking at the Singapore FinTech Festival 2025, Ashwini Kumar Tewari, Managing Director (Corporate Banking & Subsidiaries), outlined SBI’s roadmap to re-engineer its legacy systems while maintaining the trust, stability, and resilience that define its operations.
Tewari detailed that SBI’s modernization journey is anchored on a four-axis strategy — upgrading hardware, migrating from Unix to Linux, hollowing out the core by externalizing key functions such as vendor and government payments, and deploying microservices for activities like inquiries and accounting. This transformation aims to make the bank’s technology architecture more agile, scalable, and responsive to evolving customer and business needs.
He emphasized that the bank is also building a private cloud infrastructure to ensure scalability and data security while maintaining strict regulatory compliance. “We are modernizing as we run the ship. Our systems must always remain on and available to customers,” Tewari said, underscoring SBI’s focus on uninterrupted service continuity as it undergoes large-scale modernization.
Reflecting on the bank’s growing engagement with the fintech ecosystem, Tewari said the relationship between banks and fintechs has shifted “from competition to collaboration.” SBI, he explained, has developed an innovation hub and sandbox environment, providing access to nearly 300 APIs that enable fintechs to integrate, test, and scale solutions in collaboration with the bank. “Along with agility, convenience, intuitiveness, interface, security, and compliance, the ability to meet the scale of SBI’s operations is a crucial parameter for fintech onboarding,” he noted.
In a significant technological leap, SBI is now deploying agentic artificial intelligence (AI) through a fintech partner to verify trade finance documents such as guarantees and letters of credit. This initiative aims to speed up and enhance the accuracy of document verification processes, benefiting both internal teams and customers. The bank is also exploring AI applications for service ticket resolution and document analysis, further improving efficiency and customer service.
Through sustained investment in AI, cloud, and open architecture, SBI is laying the foundation for a future-ready, digital-first banking ecosystem that blends innovation with reliability — ensuring scalability, security, and a seamless experience across its digital and physical touchpoints.
