State Bank of India is the largest bank of India having its origins back in the age of the British Empire in India. The SBI Bank is the largest of the biggest 4 banks of India which includes, apart from SBI, the ICICI, Punjab National Bank and HDFC Bank and its among the largest banks in the world too. SBI Bank has its branches in Dubai of course, which is home to so many Indians working in the whole UAE. Let us see some of the history of the SBI Bank and let us look at SBI Bank Dubai too.
The story of SBI bank starts with the founding of Bank of Calcutta, which has later become Bank of Bengal, in 1806. In 1921, a large movement started in the bank life of India, along with the liberalisation movements: the Bank of Bengal merged with the Bank of Madras and Bank of Bombay. This created the Imperial Bank of India – the former State Bank or SBI Bank. State Bank of India was formed in 1955, which was mainly just a name change. The bank is owned by the Indian state. Within the Indian subcontinent, it has more than 16,000 branches, 14 regional head offices and 57 zone-head offices so it is undisputedly the largest network of India. The bank has currently 170 branches in more than 32 countries outside of India. The most important of these are their branches in Frankfurt, Tehran, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, Osaka and Dubai. The SBI Bank has specific offshore units too in Singapore and other countries, its first offshore branch opened in Mauritius,
The Dubai branch of SBI Bank was set up in 2007 and it is still located in the Dubai International Financial Centre. The reason for setting up the Dubai branch was to give more dynamism to the business life of Dubai and India jointly. SBI in Dubai offers a wide array of services, which include deposits, loan and investment, services with up to date banking techniques. As every branch of banks in the United Arab Emirates SBI Bank also got its licence from the Central Bank of UAE and it’s overlooked by Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA).The Dubai branch of SBI Bank mainly concentrates on the Indian residents and both the Indian non-residents living and working in Dubai in order to serve their needs.
SBI Bank works for a special clientele, which is called professional clientele. An individual account can be opened with a minimum amount of USD 5000; the minimum sum for corporate accounts is USD 20,000.The bank deals with deposit and investment schemes, loans and interest rates. Only those individuals can become clients of the bank who have at least USD 500,000 in net assets. On this, we can see that the bank is not exactly the people’s bank in Dubai.
SBI bank, therefore, has a pretty high profile clientele consisting of mainly Indian businesspersons and those Indians who are not Indian residents anymore. SBI Bank in Dubai has made a big name for itself with its quality services.