Country's largest lender, State Bank of India is now planning to push its retail banking segment deeper in the UK market. It has targetted a market of 1.1 million non resident Indians (NRIs) and people of Indian origin (PIO).

The bank aims to penetrate in the home loan segment (mortgages) of the British market.

The bank will introduce its entire product range in the market by March 2011 along with the addition of three more branches in the country, thus taking its total branch count to 10. This will put SBI in competition with the big names in the UK mortgage business like HSBC, Barclays, NatWest, Lloyds and RBS.

Not only is the bank aiming at the mortgage market but it also plans to launch some of its mutual funds (MF) products from its Indian mutual fund base in the UK market.

According to SBI UK's CEO and regional head, Rajnish Kumar, although there are many Indian banks operating in UK, but the penetration of Indians there is less than 10%.

Currently SBI has seven branches in UK of which four are in London and one each in Birmingham, Manchester and Leichester. The three new branches will be set up at Newham (London), Wolverhampton and Coventry with recruitment of 30 more people into the existing 150 member crew of the bank there.

The bank also has plans to penetrate its retail business in US, Canada and Hong Kong.