Challa Sreenivasulu Setty of SBI advocates expanding AI beyond customer service to enhance rural access and agricultural finance, highlighting the need for scalable, secure digital solutions to support India’s economic growth by 2047.
Challa Sreenivasulu Setty, chairman of State Bank of India, said the next phase of artificial intelligence in banking should move well beyond customer service and retail lending and be used to widen access to finance for rural households, small firms and borrowers whose histories do not fit conventional credit scoring models. Speaking at the FIBAC conference in Mumbai on Tuesday, Setty argued that India’s banking system has both the scale and the institutional reach to turn AI from a technical upgrade into a broader economic tool. He said the country’s ambition of becoming a developed economy by 2047 would require banks to take these capabilities closer to the last mile.
Setty singled out agriculture as one of the most promising areas. He said AI could help banks make better lending decisions by combining digital records, satellite imagery and data-led risk assessment, while also helping farmers with more practical, farm-level decisions. He added that these tools are already being used in some farm lending operations, but warned that the challenge is to move them out of pilot projects and into systems that are affordable and usable at scale.
His remarks fit a pattern in which the SBI chief has repeatedly framed AI as a major force in finance while also warning that technology alone is not enough. In April, Business Standard reported that Setty said AI could strengthen financial market infrastructure through better risk management, operational efficiency and real-time surveillance. In May, Mint reported that he stressed the importance of human capital, leadership and skills, saying technology-led banking cannot succeed without investment in people.
Setty has also tied AI to the next stage of financial inclusion. In October 2025, Fortune India reported that SBI was exploring whether farmers could access credit through the Unified Payments Interface, including Kisan Credit Cards, as part of an effort to reach borrowers beyond formal branch networks. Earlier, in February 2025, Mint reported that Setty had pointed to the promise of AI and generative AI in finance while warning that stronger security and consumer protection would be needed as digital threats rise. That balance , expansion on one side, safeguards on the other , remains central to SBI’s view of how the technology should be deployed.
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