Public sector lender, State Bank of India has decided that employees be mandated to take certain number of compulsory leaves as a measure to check on rising fraud in the banking space. Employees not taking any leave are suspected to have done some erroneous acts.

Banks have decided that if any such employee is a suspect then the simplest way to catch him is to send him on leave and then check out his work in his absence. The process has been adopted by MNCs and brokerage houses for long time and now SBI is also planning to work on it.

Such leaves would be called 'preventive vigilance leave' and would have a minimum tenor of 10 days every fiscal, informed SBI to its employees. The bank came up to adopt this measure when it found that in many fraud cases, those employees who had held the reputation of being hard working and dedicated were behind the crime.

According to a senior bank official, all public sector banks are actively working towards curbing the rising fraud rate and for this some banks may adopt the compulsory leave process.