SBI to Merge with Five Associate Banks from 1 April

The government has announced that from April 1 State Bank of India (SBI) will merge its five associate banks with itself, in the largest consolidation exercise ever in the banking history of India.
“The assets of State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur (SBBJ), State Bank of Mysore (SBM), State Bank of Travancore (SBT), State Bank of Patiala (SBP) and State Bank of Hyderabad (SBH) will be transferred to SBI from April 1, 2017,” said SBI in a regulatory filing after the government notified April 1 as the effective date of merger.
The merger that hasn’t been finalised yet is of another state-run lender Bhartiya Mahila Bank into SBI. SBI is expected to become one of the top 50 banks in the world with 22,500 branches, 58,000 ATMs, and a balance sheet size of over INR 32 lakh crore (about USD 500 billion) with the merger of all the five associates.
After the merger the SBI will have a customer base of over 50 crore. Also, with the exception of the board of directors and executive trustees, officers and employees of the associate banks will become the employees of SBI.
The process of data integration will soon be started by SBI while rationalising 20 percent of its branches, streamlining its IT (Information Technology) platform, getting the employees on the SBI payscale among other things and integrate its five treasury operations into one.
The first half of FY18 will see the integration being completed.