Public sector banks will continue lateral hirings from the private sector at senior levels directly from the private sector, said bankers. And most believe that this is was more of an “one-off” incident.
This comes in the backdrop of the recent ‘bob World’ controversy wherein Bank of Baroda (BoB) has claimed that it had ‘terminated’ the services of its chief digital officer (CDO) Akhil Handa — a private sector hire — after the Reserve Bank of India barred it from onboarding new customers on its app. Handa, credited with building the flagship bob World app, said that he had resigned earlier in August.
Some also believe that while Handa built the mobile application, operating it was not under his direct control. “If someone mis-sells something and onboards customers into app with their own numbers, that is not the fault of the CDO,” a senior bank official said.
However, this controversy is unlikely to deter banks from lateral hiring. “Specialised skill set is hard to get. Banks will continue hiring from the market, whether it be a PSB or private sector bank. One or two incidents will not lead to change in the overall strategy ,” said a top executive at State Bank of India (SBI).
For example, SBI will continue hiring candidates from the market whenever there is a gap in technical areas such as data and analytics, the official said. SBI had earlier hired chief technology officer (CTO) Balaji Rajagopalan in 2022 from ICICI Bank where he was serving as technology group head. It also hired former HSBC chief information officer (CIO) Aparna Kumar as its CIO last year and onboarded former Ujjivan SFB MD Nitin Chugh as a deputy MD of the bank. SBI’s total employee base stood at 235,858 as of March end and about 8,0000 to 12,000 employees retire each year, according to a mid-level executive at the bank.
BoB itself is also looking forward to continue private sector hirings whenever there is a need, a senior executive FE. “Whatever issues happened at BoB World, the action was taken against CDO as he was the overall in charge of digital operations. That does not have direct connection with other lateral hirings,” the official said.
BoB’s lateral hirings include CFO Ian De Souza, Chief Risk Officer S. Anantharaman, Chief Collection Officer Girish Patnaik and Head of Wealth Management subsidiary Virendra Somwanshi, among others.
Speaking to FE, Bank of India MD, CEO Rajneesh Karnatak said though the bank hires some senior executives from private sector, not a single decision is made individually and each decision passes only after committee meetings.
For example, Bank of India recently hired former Standard Chartered Bank CTO official Yusuf Roopawalla as its new CTO on the level of a general manager. Karnatak said Roopawalla reports to chief general manager of IT vertical at the bank, who subsequently reports to an executive director at the bank, thereby removing the scope of any individual decisions.
“Today there is no decision making from an individual’s side, every decision is based on recommendations of specific committees. Therefore, there is no risk emanating to the bank because it has taken a particular person on contract because everything comes to the committees,” he said.
PSU banks continue hiring private sector employees on a contract basis because of their functional capabilities, Karnatak said. Executives who are appointed on a contract basis are pre-dominantly into IT, risk advisory, and compliance segments. “The hiring is done for keeping best industry practices in hand,” he said.
Bank of Maharashtra, meanwhile, has hired assistant general manager level executives from the market on a permanent basis, MD & CEO AS Rajeev told FE. He added that currently the bank is running advertisements to recruit more than 100 candidates at tier-II and tier-III level in credit department.