Amitabh Chaturvedi, the former group president of Reliance Capital, who has recently joined Dhanalakshmi Bank as the managing director & CEO, plans to revamp the operations of the old generation private sector bank.
In the next two years, the bank plans to undergo a complete change in the areas like re-branding, expanding the branch network, internet banking facilities, expanding manpower, ATM network, growing the balance sheet size, reducing non-performing assets (NPAs) and maintaining profitability.
“Firstly, we would be changing the entire culture and the mindset of the organization making them more tech-savvy and helping them take the right decisions,” said Chaturvedi in an exclusive interview with FE.
“We will be adding 400-500 employees to the existing manpower base of 1,400 staff. We will also tie up with various B-schools and the IIBF, maybe in the next year. We will look at individuals with 5-7 years of work experience in the banking sector. Management trainees will also be hired,” said Chaturvedi.
The bank will hire personnel in various fields like sales, front and back office operations, customer service and IT.
“Compensation changes will also be made,” he added. The bank will be making heavy disbursements during the year.
“We have already disbursed Rs 50 crore each to 6 big blue chip companies and are talking to more companies for the same. We have identified business with 40-50 companies, out of which six have already been closed. We have the liquidity and the only problem is that it has to be put into used effectively,” noted Chaturvedi.
On the re-branding exercise, the bank plans to come out with a different layout, colour, adding a different logo and perception to the bank.
Talking about the bank’s capital raising plans, Chaturvedi noted that bank would be raising tier I capital after March 2009. The bank’s capital adequacy ratio stands at 15.56% as on September 30, 2008.
“At any given time, we would not like to take our CAR below 11%,” he noted.
