A few weeks after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) barred Bank of Baroda (BoB) from onboarding new customers on its flagship BoB World app, the bank’s chief of digital lending business, Akhil Handa, has quit from his position, the lender said in an exchange notice on Tuesday night.
Kadgatoor Sheetal Venkatesmurt, the current head of BoB’s digital channels and operations, will take over Handa’s responsibilities. The reason for the change is due to the cessation of Handa’s employment, the notice said.
Credited with building BoB’s flagship BoB World application, Handa was among the first high-profile hirings from the private sector into a public sector bank in 2015. Handa was appointed the CDO by former MD and CEO PS Jayakumar and acted as an advisor to the MD in digital and fintech partnerships.
“As I embark on a new journey, today, 31.10.23, marks the end of my journey at Bank of Baroda, and I wanted to take a moment to express my heartfelt gratitude to my incredible colleagues for the incredible support and camaraderie during my time here,” Handa said in a late-night post on LinkedIn.
“While the decision to move on was made a long time ago, I had to wait until my transition period completion to make this announcement… Onwards to new adventures…,” he added.
During his stint at BoB, Handa was responsible for handling various verticals, including digital payment, assets, product engineering, digital channels, ATMs, fintech partnership, startup banking and BoB innovation centre.
Handa’s exit comes amid the bank suspending other top-level officials after the BoB World app issue came to the light. Earlier last month, FE had reported that BoB had suspended senior officials, including AGM and GMs, business correspondents and consultants, hired to onboard new customers on the mobile app. While the number of employees could not be confirmed, the suspension was done after an internal review found lapses in the procedure of onboarding new customers onto the app.
The investigation found that some employees fraudulently linked mobile numbers with accounts of customers without their consent to increase the active user base of the app and to meet their monthly targets. The banking regulator on October 10 barred Bank of Baroda from onboarding new customers on BoB World, which had 53 million downloads and a 300million active user base as of March-end.
During his last interview as CDO with FE in June, Handa had said the bank would target digital disbursals to the tune of Rs 90,000 crore in FY24.
