New Delhi- India will soon have more domestic lenders featured in the top 100 global banks list, given the pace of economic expansion and growth in the banking system, RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra said on Thursday.

Interacting with the students after delivering VKRV Rao Memorial Lecture at the Delhi School of Economics here, the governor said the RBI can not put a number of big banks India should have in the global list.

Expressing optimism, Malhotra said,“...there are many banks in the public sector space and in private sector...the pace at which they are growing, I think it is only a matter of time that we will have a number of banks, quite a few banks, in the top hundred banks of the world”.

Currently, only State Bank of India (SBI) and HDFC Bank appear among the world's top 100 banks, ranked 43rd and 73rd, respectively.

PSU banks' cumulative profit rose to a record level of Rs 1.78 lakh crore in the fiscal year ended March 2025, a growth of 26 per cent over the previous year.

All 12 public sector banks had earned a total profit of Rs 1.41 lakh crore in FY24.

Earlier this month, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said the country needs big and world-class banks, and discussions are on with the Reserve Bank and lenders in this regard.

“It is not by creating from those which exist today...just by amalgamation that can also be one of the routes, but you need an ecosystem and an environment in which more banks can operate and operate to grow. So, that environment is actually well established in India, but I needed to be more dynamic. So, some work is happening on it,” she had said.

In a bid to create bigger banks, the government in the past had done two rounds of consolidation. In the biggest consolidation exercise in the banking space, the government, in August 2019, had announced four major mergers of public sector banks, bringing down their total number to 12 from 27 in 2017.

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