Choosing bank preferences and allotment in IBPS PO

Clearing IBPS PO gets you a job. Provisional allotment decides which bank that job is in, and through the bank, which region you will probably spend your first years in, how you are trained and how your promotions are handled. Many candidates spend months on the exam and ten minutes on their preferences. This guide is about spending those ten minutes better.

How allotment works

• IBPS allots candidates to the participating public sector banks that reported vacancies for that cycle.
• Allotment follows your final merit rank, your order of preferences and the vacancies each bank reported in your category.
• IBPS goes down the merit list. Each candidate gets the highest bank on their list that still has a vacancy in their category.
• Candidates who qualify but are not allotted in the first round may be kept on a reserve list for a period, and allotted later if banks report more vacancies. The notification describes how long the list is kept.

SBI does not recruit through IBPS PO; it runs its own PO exam. Regional rural banks recruit officers through a separate IBPS exam.

A worked example

This is a simplified illustration with made-up banks and one category. Bank A has 2 vacancies, Bank B has 2 and Bank C has 3.

Two lessons come out of this.

• Your preference order never hurts your rank. Candidate 4 got C because they chose it first, not because they were weaker. Putting a bank first does not reduce your chance at the others.
• Leaving banks off the list can leave you without a seat while a vacancy is still open. When candidate 7's turn came, one seat in C was still open, but C was not on their list, so they got nothing. If your notification lets you rank only some banks, think hard before leaving any out.

The banks, and why their maps look the way they do

The public sector banks other than SBI are listed below. Which of them take part, and how many vacancies each reports, changes every cycle.

A bank's branches are often denser in and around its home region, but the mergers of 2019 and 2020 changed that picture. Vijaya Bank and Dena Bank merged into Bank of Baroda; Syndicate Bank into Canara Bank; Allahabad Bank into Indian Bank; Oriental Bank of Commerce and United Bank of India into Punjab National Bank; and Andhra Bank and Corporation Bank into Union Bank of India. So a bank can now have a large network in a region far from its head office. The history is in the guide to nationalisation and bank mergers.

What to weigh

For most people, region outweighs everything else in the first years. A bank you rate highly on paper can mean four years in a place where you cannot speak to customers comfortably. Size matters less than candidates think; every public sector bank trains its officers and has a path to the higher scales.

How to find out

• Read each bank's annual report and website for branch counts by state or zone.
• Talk to serving officers, ideally from the last two or three batches. Ask about training, first postings, transfers and promotion tests.
• Be wary of forum rankings that do not explain their reasons, and of any single officer's view of a whole bank.

A simple scoring method

Give each factor a weight, score each bank from 1 to 5, and add it up. Here is an example for one aspirant, with made-up banks. They care most about region, so region carries 40% and the other three factors 20% each.

The numbers are not magic. The value is that you have to decide what you care about before you look at the banks, so a friend's opinion or a forum post does not reorder your list at the last minute.

Mistakes to avoid

• Ranking by popularity. The bank everyone wants may not be the bank that suits your region or language.
• Ignoring region and language. A posting where you cannot talk to customers makes the first years much harder.
• Leaving banks off the list when the system allows it, as the worked example shows.
• Filling preferences at the last minute, on a phone, without a saved copy.
• Assuming you can switch banks easily later. Moving usually means taking another exam and starting again.
• Assuming allotment can be changed on request. Treat your submitted order as final.

After allotment

The allotted bank contacts you with joining instructions, document checks and a medical examination. Probation, training and the first year are covered in probation, training and the first year. If you are on the reserve list, keep your documents ready and watch both the IBPS site and your email.

A simple method, step by step

1. List the participating banks and vacancies for your cycle from the notification.
2. For each, note its main regions and the languages you would need.
3. Decide your weights before you look at any rankings.
4. Talk to at least one officer in each of your top three choices.
5. Score, rank, and check that no bank you would accept is missing from the list.
6. Submit early and save a copy of what you submitted.