My Life at SBI 1997 2004

It was a moment of very great pleasure when i Joined SBI ., and Mr Nagarajn CGM addressed us ion the first day. It was a dream come true. Especaially when another PSB had rejected you on your face short while ago, there you are, as a probationer at the No 1 bank , once rated next to the central civil services.. a moment of pride., and ofcourse of humilty that man makes his destiny , only, with the guidance of god

So I joined SBI as Probationay officer in 1997 Aug 01 Had oppurtunity to work with State bank of India , at various branches small and large in Kerala and Tamilnadu, learning on the job and undergoing class room training on Credit Froex and Agri banking in addition to Personal and Retail banking , at Palakkad Town, IFB Coimbatore, Siruthozhil Nungambakkam and Madurai ADB.

Had the STC trainings at Baroda vadodara and Bhubaneshwar, and SBSC trainng at Gurgaon

I had the privilege of undergoing the passing power training under AGM Mr.Patttabiraman Kuppu at Madurai Main branch, where I earned the good will of quite a lot of retail customers and provided a launch pad for my IT career in the bank.

Having completed the Probation period, have been rewarded the foreign assignment as IBTO at SBI Hongkong . At Hongkong , I was taking care of Credit, Investments and Trade , Systems , MIS Compliance . I was working under Mr Rao and Mr AmitabhNarain as CEO there, with M/s Kalyan mukherjee, Naresh Malhothra , Sen, Majumdar , HAnnah, Subramaniam Sekar, Pushan , ShailendraKumar. Kaul and others as VPs and Narendra Jena ,Vijay , AS Paul. Mishra , Rakhi, as AVP Colleagues and had a very nice time enjoying working at Centra Business District of l Hongkong and living at Tai koo shing the Residential Hub of majority of Indians upto Dec 2001

In Apr 2002 , I took up an assignment with SBI foreign Department Kolkata(Calcutta) both with the Sytems and Technology Dept as well as the Systems and Procedure Department, and was core member of the team taking care of Centralilsed reconcililation of the nostro vostro accounts of the bank. Thereafter I was involved in design, implementation and maintenance of the centralised messaging system by swift and adaptation of the structured financing messaging system (SFMS) of IDRBT Hydrabad for internal use of the bank for forex messaging, interation with Vendors and coordinate with various stake holders for implementation of the Procedure for the use of SIM SIG mechanism at SBI and Associate bank branches. I Was also responsbible for the conduct of the System acceptance testing , Installation , Trouble shooting, and server administration and laying down the process for DRS and Cordination with SWIFT and SOC Mumbai. Then I was assigned to take care of User Training and activities like issuance of circulars for the processing of the International Banking Products and laying down procedures for the Forex processing as per the extant FEDAI / FEMA / RBI and GOI /FinMin regulations in vogue.

FD provided an oppurtunity to intereact with almost all the 450 odd Forex authorised A,B,C category branches and helped to leverage on the Network. I was living out of the Same small Hotel room at Middleton Street for all these 2 years and relished being at my desk for 16-18 hours every day ., and causing pain and pleasure to these branches. AT FD I had the oppurtunity to work under GM Ramesh kumar and GM AK Dasgupta, and AGM Zaman Amin, Janardhan Bandhopadyay, Mr Panda, Mr PN Biswas (to whom i was reporting to ), Suryanarayana G, Narottam Reddy, etc and of course SK Biswas and Saurav Nandhi and host of others including bhakshi / S Sinha / Vasudevan etc who had a great role to play in shaping my personality as I got my Dy manager MM II promotion also while at FD and had completed my OCP DBA , Oracle certified professional Data base administrator, Oracle 9i, while at Kolkata.

For some time I was placed at Recruitment Cell, along with Ex IBTO Mr Ajay and also Nosro Cell at Chennai LHO also where Mr Karthi, Mr Renuka and AGM Krishnam made my life comfortable by taking the toll of the work load on themselves , during Jan2002 to Apr 2002

First two years as PO in various branches, Another two years at Hongkong and Yet another two years at Kolkata FD, were all golden periods of my woking life in their own right, and will always be longing to have them back in some form or the other.

I am ever thankful to all my Co-Workers at SBI who had provided me with lots of oppurtunities to perform , and setting the plarform, without with i could not have excelled in exceeding their expectations from me and thereby proving the worth of their choice.

Thank you SBI and all your guys, again and again., for all that you have given to me

(In Sep 1999 I left behind Bavani Sankaran , Vishnu vardhan, Satheesh iddum Vijay and Sanjay and went to Hong kong . A year later Bavani and Vijay went to manage the exchange companies in Persian Gulf and still later Sathish joined SCB Scope. Sriram R who went to los angels with me, left SBI and joined ICICI Santhome office as Credit Manager. Satish later joined Bank of America and is now at their Hyderabad Backoffice, Sanjay is Branch manager near vivekanadapuram kanyakumari and Bavani & Vishnu are branch manager ner Pondicherry as of Sep 2006)

I was always interested in activities related to facilitation of international trade and bank finance for the same, thereby see a smile in the customers face, even when i was new to the banking industry!! And my interest in Banking and client service was due to you.!