India, Aug. 12 -- The country's largest lender, State Bank of India (SBI), used artificial intelligence to underwrite nearly Rs 1 lakh crore in MSME loans of up to Rs 5 crore each during 2025-26, a senior bank official said on Wednesday, August 12.

"In FY26, in 12 months time, we are able to underwrite loans up to Rs 5 crore, both covering the new-to-bank customers, as well as existing customers. Almost Rs 1 lakh crore we were able to underwrite," SBI Managing Director Rama Mohan Rao Amara said at the annual FIBAC event here.

He added that the bank is also deploying artificial intelligence, including Large Language Models (LLMs), to automate processing of cheques up to Rs 10,000.

The use of AI has helped free up the bandwidth of relati...