Country’s largest lender State Bank of India ( SBI ) plans to raise the threshold for artificial intelligence led cheque processing to Rs 1 lakh from the current Rs 10,000, a move that could see more than 50-55 per cent of the lender’s cheques, by volume, processed through automated models, Chief Information Officer Abhay Kishore Pandey told ETBFSI. “Very soon, it is going to become 1 lakh rupees. In that case, almost more than 50-55 per cent of our checks in terms of number will be processed through this automated model and that will take care of a lot of my cost,” Pandey said. SBI currently uses image based AI models for cheque truncation and has automated the processing of cheques up to Rs 10,000. The lower threshold covers around 25 per cent of the bank’s total cheque volumes, according to SBI Managing Director Rama Mohan Rao Amara. Advt Amara had earlier said SBI had fully automated the processing of these cheques through a straight-through processing (STP) system, with practically no human intervention in the transaction flow. The bank uses Vision LLMs to read cheques, verify mandatory fields and check compliance requirements. A control risk unit continues to review a sample of AI-processed cheques to identify misses and determine whether the underlying models require further training. Pandey said the next phase of automation is aimed not merely at replacing manual processing but at freeing employees to focus on customer-facing activities. “The entire focus is on the cost optimisation, how to serve our customer at a much cheaper pace so that the people who are working on those lines should concentrate more on interacting with the customer and serving the customer rather than processing the backend,” he said.