State Bank of India (SBI), the largest lender of the country, is mulling over a plan to have its branches open even on Sundays, Chairman Pratip Chaudhuri revealed.

Mr. Chaudhuri told analysts that opening branches on Sundays would help improve efficiency.

Revealing the plan, he said, “Possibly we would like to see Sunday working which would increase the time available for doing banking and increase the business.”

Last year, SBI kept all its branches open on public holiday of Gandhi Jayanti on October 2nd to compensate for a day's business loss because of a technical glitch.

Opening branches on Sundays will allow the bank to attract the new-age working class customers where both the husband and wife are in work, and struggle to do banking transactions during the working days. It may be noted here that SBI counts on its huge piles of savings account deposits (38 per cent) for higher margins.

However, if SBI made such a move, it would be interesting to know how bank employee unions, which went on two-day strike across the country last week to protest reform measures in the banking sector, take to such a proposal.

Many private banks already keep their select branches open on Sundays to help busy customer do banking transactions. However, the emergence of new technologies, such as Internet banking, has decreased the need.