Automation has SBI leaving 25% retirement vacancies open for tech

Last year, the Railways had received a whopping 23 million applications for 90,000 posts that it was filling up.

As technological shifts make more inroads into banking, the nations largest lender SBI has decided to replace only 75 percent of its retiring workforce over a five-year period and is benefiting from the prevailing poor jobs scenario by getting the best of candidates for the roles on offer, a senior official has said.

In a situation akin to the one observed in the Railways, the State Bank Group has got close to 28 lakh job applications for 8,000 clerical jobs in the last two years.

Starting 2018 fiscal, it has begun hiring only about 10,000 to replace the over 12,000 retirements annually, and 80 percent of the new recruits joining as a clerks are either MBAs or engineers.