Double shifts would not only provide customers increased banking hours but also optimum utilisation of its own staff, he said. Under the extended banking hours facility, SBI would offer services to customers for additional two hours till 4 pm from its usual time of 2 pm.

Radhakrishnan said banking hours for the proposed double shifts would be from 8 am to 2 pm and from 2 pm To 10 pm, a concept yet to be made practical by Indian public sector banks. However, he declined to specify the time-period for the proposed double-shift banking.

Radhakrishnan said SBI was also working towards single-window transactions under which retail clients would be providedall services at a single counter. On SBI's plans for the next fiscal, Radhakrishnan said the bank was looking at networking of its branches for providing value addition to technology, resulting in better customer services and improved efficiency. He said the pilot project would be at three centres of Mumbai, Bangalore and Nagpur. While in Mumbai 31 branches would be connected through networking, in Bangalore 37 of SBI's branches would be inter-linked.

He said in the next stage, six more centres - Lucknow, Bhopal, Calcutta, Delhi, Ahmedabad and Chandigarh would be networked through focal point processing centres. SBI is also installing very small aperture terminals (V-Sat) at all local head offices and zonal offices under the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) V-Sat project for facilitating movement of management information systems (MIS) and other statutory information.