Dinesh Khara takes over as SBI Chairman

Dinesh Kumar Khara has taken over as the new Chairman of State Bank of India (SBI), India’s largest bank, from October 7. Rajnish Kumar, who led the bank for the last three years, demitted the office.

Khara, previously a Managing Director at SBI, was selected by the Banks Board Bureau (BBB) – the body entrusted with the task of the selection of the chiefs of public sector banks and insurance companies. The soft-spoken Khara, who joined SBI as a probationary officer in 1984, has over 35 years of experience in banking.

Khara is taking over at a time when the banking sector is facing many challenges due to the Covid-19 pandemic. As the moratorium on loan repayments ended on August 31, SBI is now tackling the loan restructuring proposal. The new Chairman will also have to tackle the menace of non-performing assets (NPAs) as the economy is in a contraction mode. SBI’s gross NPAs were at 5.44 per cent of advances (Rs 1,29,661 crore) as of June 2020.

Khara led the SBI initiative to merge five associate banks with SBI in 2017. As the MD, he oversaw the international banking book, corporate banking book & treasury operations of SBI. Additionally, he supervised the businesses of SBI’s non-banking subsidiaries, engaged in diverse financial activities such as asset management, insurance, custodial services, primary dealership, broking, credit cards, pension funds and factoring services.