Punjab & Sind Bank chief executive Swarup Kumar Saha has set the ambitious target of lifting the lender’s total business to Rs 4 lakh crore over the next three years through branch expansions, organisational changes, productivity improvement and capacity building.

The plan will involve an annual addition of Rs 50,000 crore of business through loans and deposits during this period. Boston Consultancy Group (BCG) has been hired to advise on employee training and performance to scale up growth.

The first target on sight is to achieve a business of Rs 3 lakh crore by the end of the current fiscal, up from Rs 2.63 lakh the state-run bank reported in FY26. “We have taken a board approval to take our total business to Rs 4 lakh crore by FY29. That means we need to add around Rs 50,000 crore a year to reach there,” Saha said.

The CEO of Punjab & Sind Bank has laid out a strategic roadmap to achieve this three-year growth. An important part of this is to closely monitor and improve branch-wise productivity. Saha admits that the business per branch at around Rs 158 crore is increasing, but is still much below the industry average. 

“This is the area where we would like to improve upon in the current year. We are working on rationalisation and productivity improvement of our branches. We would also like to open new branches which would handle substantial business,” he said.

Even as Punjab & Sind Bank is planning to add 200 branches and rationalise ones where business is low or not profitable, global consultancy firm BCG is helping it to identify the locations of these outfits. Most of the new branches will be outside the state of Punjab, which was almost getting saturated in terms of business for the bank. A pan-India presence would enable the lender to tap low-cost CASA (current account savings account) deposits and credit growth opportunities.

A marketing vertical has been created to improve business in the branches. “We have now introduced tab banking for customer acquisition and CRM (customer relationship management) for lead generation. We are also leveraging our digital initiatives,” Saha said.

As part of the organisational restructuring plan, a four-tier structure has been created. There are five zonal head offices headed by general managers while regional offices have been expanded to 33. 

“We have carved out new regional offices in Raipur, Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar and Shimla. This leads to much more decentralised control on the branch network and the customers. It will help the bank in becoming more efficient and cost effective,” Saha said.

For capacity building, the bank has launched the ‘Navjyoti’ programme under the guidance of BCG. While the first phase of target-setting, performance management, tool-based assessments and succession plan, the second phase is under way. This will primarily focus on capacity building of the lender’s executives. 

“We have taken out a plan of culling out around 125 officers from scale IV, V and VI, who will be especially groomed for the future leadership in the bank. So that programme is getting initiated,” Saha said.

For growth in the current financial year, the bank is hoping to gain from a loan pipeline of Rs 18,000 crore on the corporate side, up from Rs 12,000 crore in the preceding December quarter. Retail, MSME (micro, small and medium enterprises) and agriculture segments are also seeing strong growth. “On the credit cycle, we feel that we have enough room to grow at our projected rate of 16% to 18%,” said Saha.

On the deposit front, the bank is expecting to post a growth of 13% to 14% in FY27. The bank is also targeting both the state government and central government entities for salary account and other ancillary businesses.

“We have got new central connect products for salary accounts. Now we'll expand that central government package to the state government and other PSU employees,” Saha said.  

In FY26, Punjab & Sind Bank’s total business grew 14.94% year-on-year to Rs 2,63,652 crore. While gross advances rose 18.29% to Rs 1,17,823 crore, deposits saw a growth of 12.37% to Rs 1,45,829 crore. Net profit stood at Rs 1,322 crore, up 30.12% YoY.