Kotak Mahindra Bank Joint MD KVS Manian steps down with immediate effect

Kotak Mahindra Bank's joint MD KVS Manian has resigned from his position with immediate effect, the bank told the exchanges in a regulatory filing. The company board has accepted his resignation with immediate effect.

Manian, a whole-time director at the bank, was promoted to the position of joint MD effective March 1, 2024, after the bank appointed new MD and CEO Ashok Vaswani.

“KVS Manian, Whole-Time Director designated as Joint MD, has stepped down from his position to pursue other opportunities in the financial services sector,” the bank said in the release.

During his 29 years at Kotak Group, Manian was instrumental in expanding the Wholesale Bank, Commercial Bank, Private Banking, Asset Reconstruction Division, and Wholesale Credit. Additionally, he supervised the group's institutional equities and investment banking operations, and spearheaded diverse businesses in consumer, commercial, wholesale, and private banking.

Commenting on the development, Ashok Vaswani, MD & CEO, Kotak Mahindra Bank said “Manian has spent over 29 years at Kotak and we are thankful to him for his association and we wish him well in his future endeavours. We are confident of the strong leadership talent at Kotak and our ability to scale our businesses to the next level in times to come.”

Following Manian's exit, the Wholesale, Commercial and Private Bank will now report directly to Vaswani, while the Asset Reconstruction Division will report to Shanti Ekambaram, Deputy Managing Director. Ekambaram will also oversee the Investment Banking and Institutional Equities businesses.

Ekambaram was also elevated as Deputy MD from whole-time director on March 1. After Manian, she will be the in charge of the growth of 811, Treasury, and Global Markets businesses, in addition to overseeing the functions of Human Resources, Group Marketing & Corporate Communications, Internal Vigilance, Internal Audit (administrative matters), Public Affairs, Corporate Social Responsibility, and ESG.

Last week, the lender was barred by the Reserve Bank of India from onboarding new customers online or issuing new credit cards. RBI's action came after inspecting the bank's IT systems for the past two years. It noted that the bank has failed to resolve issues.

In the order, RBI said that the investigation was conducted for years of 2022 and 2023. It said, "[The] actions are necessitated based on significant concerns arising out of Reserve Bank’s IT Examination of the bank for the years 2022 and 2023 and the continued failure on part of the bank to address these concerns in a comprehensive and timely manner. Serious deficiencies and non-compliances were observed in the areas of IT inventory management, patch and change management, user access management, vendor risk management, data security and data leak prevention strategy, business continuity and disaster recovery rigour and drill, etc."