My largest branch is my mobile app,” says Shanti Ekambaram, Deputy Managing Director of Kotak Mahindra Bank (KMB). About 98% of their savings account transactions go through mobile, she says, adding that the industry is currently undergoing a significant transformation, with tech, customer experience, and talent being the three main focus areas.
Over the past 20 months, KMB has been adding outside and global talent in technology, customer experience, branding and marketing, risk analytics and data, and even a new CHRO. This also comes as Founder Uday Kotak hung up his boots and passed on the CEO’s baton to Ashok Vaswani—yet another global hire. Shanti, a KMB veteran who oversees the HR function, says the bank has been supplementing its core banking and financial engineering knowledge with outside talent to suit changing requirements.
The large existing talent base is also provided with opportunities to enhance their skills and get inducted into three-to-six-month team- and individual-leadership programmes after two to four years in the organisation. Prominent among them is the Kotak Young Leaders Council, where employees with high potential are groomed for fast-track leadership opportunities through exposure to meetings with senior management, special projects, and shadowing the board. “We have done this for three years now, and we have been able to elevate a lot of them into opportunities,” says Shanti.
But as the banking industry is battling 40%-plus attrition, KMB is no exception. She says it’s concentrated among the young frontline workers, who are not averse to switching industries due to a change in mindset post-Covid. CHRO Anupam Kaura says they are addressing it through a combination of measures in the work environment, the work itself, providing enabling resources, timely decisions, strong communication channels, avenues for skills and growth, as well as associated rewards. Thanks to these initiatives, the lender was recognised as the Best Bank in the Talent and Workforce category in the BT-KPMG Best Banks and NBFCs Survey 2022-23.
As the bank transitions from a Founder-CEO to a professional CEO, Shanti says its focus is squarely on the three pillars of technology, customer experience, and talent.
@SaysVidya