State Bank of India (SBI) is planning a separate digital entity. It will revamp its current mobile application, rechristening it ‘Only Yono’, as part of its decision to be future-ready, showed documents. SBI wants to implement the revamp in 12-18 months, including migrating existing Yono customers to Only Yono.

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“Only Yono is envisaged as the next generation of Yono which will make SBI ready to launch a completely digital bank with a leaner and modular architecture, more streamlined journeys, sleek and personalised customer-centric design and capturing value from ecosystems,” according to a notice by the bank seeking consultants for this initiative.

Globally, banks have experimented with the idea of opening separate digital entities to cater to a defined customer segment, providing a more targeted approach than ever before. In India, a Niti Aayog discussion paper released in November last year recommended a new piece of regulated entities are full-stack digital banks. To be sure, there is no separate licensing arrangement for such banks by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), but lenders want to be prepared if and when the regulator floats such a proposal.