Mumbai: State Bank of India has started digitising its systems for tracking stressed assets to enhance recovery and monitoring, said a senior bank official. This is the final major business area at the nation’s largest lender still awaiting full digitisation.
The project, called Stressed Asset Lifecycle Management System internally, has been in progress for six months and is slated for launch by January 2027. It will gather details of older stressed accounts on one dashboard for real-time monitoring, quicker decisions and better oversight of bad-loan recoveries.
Executives will be able to see the stage of each stressed asset and ongoing recovery steps, which is currently not feasible, the official told Mint.
The platform will combine information on legacy non-performing assets such as account status, legal actions, recovery measures and case updates, allowing central monitoring and fewer delays from scattered processes.
SBI has improved asset quality in recent years yet still handles a large volume of older stressed accounts. Gross non-performing assets stood at ₹73,452 crore as of March, down from ₹76,880 crore a year earlier. The gross NPA ratio fell to a 20-year low of 1.49 percent from 1.82 percent, while the net NPA ratio was 0.39 percent versus 0.47 percent.
Major bad-loan portions as of 31 March came from trading, telecom, roads and ports. Most of the ₹73,452-crore NPAs fall under an unclassified ‘others’ category at ₹52,947 crore, or 72 percent of the total.
In FY26 the bank wrote off ₹17,803 crore in bad assets compared with ₹20,309 crore in FY25. Recoveries from written-off accounts reached ₹10,054 crore versus ₹8,002 crore the prior year.
The broader banking sector has also seen better asset quality, with gross NPAs at a multi-decade low of 1.8 percent in FY26 per RBI data.
The new dashboard aims to increase accountability by showing each account’s status, streamline recoveries and cut delays in long-pending cases.
Digitisation can help tackle reluctance to decide on legacy bad loans due to accountability concerns and small sizes, said Nirmal Gangwal of Brescon. Digital tools can speed processes and remove vested interests, he added.
The initiative aligns with earlier comments by SBI managing director Ashwini Kumar Tewari on using technology for stressed-asset monitoring.
