The management committee is headed by IBA chairman and Union Bank CMD AT Paneerselvam and consists of Bank of Baroda CMD K Kannan, Oriental Bank CMD Dalbir Singh, Martin Fish of Stanchart, and all deputy chairmen of the IBA. Among others in the management committee are Dena Bank CMD Ramesh Mishra, Rashid Jilani of Punjab National Bank and S Rajagopal of Bank of India.

As part of the restructuring, the bankers' body will soon have a second-tier management structure to conduct a greater role that the association seeks in the future. The secretary will continue to be the first tier in IBA. Currently, the IBA secretary is MN Dandekar, but the Andeersen report has recommended that the secretary relieve himself of day-to-day activities andconcentrate on major policy initiatives.

"The organisational restructuring will be kicked off with the appointment of three to four directors very soon who will report to the secretary," top sources in IBA said after the management committee meeting was over.

Currently, the secretary oversees the administrative, financial and organisational matters. "The secretariat handles all these on a day-to-day basis. Now the directors will overlook the daily administration, finance and policy apart from initiating new things, implementing new ideas and overlooking other daily activities that the IBA is concerned with," sources said. These directors will be assisted by deputy directors who will report to the directors.

According to sources, the directors will not essentially be public sector bankers but professionals in their own fields. "We will recruit professionals and they need not be from public sector banks," the source said.

Sources said that the funding requirements and budgetary allotments are yet to beworked out, but with a new tier to manage the organisation, sources said that they will have to seek increased sources of funding. "We are working on the funding requirements and the financing of such a restructuring is being worked out," the IBA source said.

IBA had appointed Arthur Andersen in a bid to overhaul its image and move away from being a reactive agency to a more market responsive pro-active body which in course of time could earn a statutory status to perform and discharge some functions that lie with the regulators and owners. Reserve Bank governor Bimal Jalan has already told the IBA to work towards seeking a self-regulatory organisation status for itself.

In response to the Andersen report, IBA, which was earlier an insulated bankers' forum, has started to interact with various industry organisations like CII, Ficci and Assocham. In fact, Keshub Mahindra, chairman of Mahindra & Mahindra, was a key note speaker at the annual general meeting of the IBA.