While Bank of Baroda MD and CEO Debadatta Chand on Saturday said the bank has taken action against several of its staffers, including former chief digital officer (CDO) Akhil Handa, by terminating their employment after the BoB World app fiasco, Handa claims he had resigned, and the bank is just “deflecting from its operational lapses” by saying it terminated employees.
“We have taken action against a large set of people on the field. As far as the chief digital officer is concerned, it is a cessation of service induced by the bank. That is termination. Currently, we have put in somebody else as CDO,” Chand said during the post-earnings call on Saturday.
However, Handa told FE on phone that he had resigned from his position in August. FE has seen a copy of his resignation letter sent to the bank’s human resource department on August 10.
“My exit was a personal decision that I conveyed to the top management in August and since then I had been serving my notice period,” he said.
“The narrative of termination seems a deflection from operational lapses at the branch level. Mobile banking onboarding process is controlled by operations department methodology that requires mobile number seeding. The mobile number seeding is a pure branch-level process,” he said.
FE had reported last month that BoB had suspended multiple senior officials, including AGMs 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 to meet their monthly targets.
The Reserve Bank of India had subsequently barred BoB from onboarding any more customers on its flagship BoB World mobile application on October 10.
While BoB is working towards complying with RBI norms on customer onboarding on the mobile application, Chand said on Saturday that he does not foresee any major losses emanating from the action. He said the bank can still generate new business from its website, other digital channels and physical branches.
BoB World has a strong active user base of nearly 30 million and 53 million downloads as of March end. About 98% of BoB’s savings account and 91% of current accounts acquisitions are currently being done through digital channels. More importantly, 43% of fixed deposits (FD) and recurring deposits (RDs) are also opened through BoB World.