HDFC Bank announces wide-ranging organisational changes; outlines three focus areas

Seven months after Sashi Jagdishan took over as its chief executive and managing director, largest private sector lender HDFC Bank on Friday announced wide-ranging organisational changes.

The bank has been reorganised into three pillars of 'business verticals', 'delivery channels' and, 'technology and digital', as per a statement.

The lender has made a slew of changes in the senior leadership roles as well, with current group head for corporate banking Rahul Shukla being entrusted with the commercial banking (MSME) and rural vertical.

"We are creating engines of growth with top tier talent backed by technology and digital transformation to capitalise on opportunities that will accrue in the coming time," Jagdishan, who had served as the 'change agent' under predecessor Aditya Puri, said.

The initiative has been christened as 'Project Future-Ready' internally.

The creation of focused business verticals and delivery channels is aimed at enabling the lender to capitalise on the opportunities across customer segments in the time to come, the statement said.

"I am sure this structure will create the necessary strategic and execution agility that we need to serve our customers across India & Bharat, Retail, Commercial (MSME) and Corporate segments," Jagdishan added.

'Business verticals' will include corporate banking, retail banking, private banking, government and institutional banking, retail assets and payments, the statement said, adding the bank is increasing its focus on commercial banking.

Under 'delivery verticals', facets such as branch banking, tele-service/sales (including virtual relationship manager or VRM channel), sales channels aligned with the business verticals and digital marketing are being included.

Apart from this, all the businesses and delivery channels will be backed by the 'technology and digital' vertical as the core backbone, the statement said, pointing out that it has already outlined its technology transformation agenda to both run and build the bank.

Executive Director Kaizad Bharucha, a bank veteran, will continue to drive wholesale banking, including corporate banking group, capital and commodities markets group and financial institutions.

Parag Rao, the group head for payments business, will now drive the technology transformation and digital agenda, besides continuing to be responsible for the payments vertical.

He will have Ramesh Lakshminarayanan, chief information officer and Anjani Rathor, chief digital officer, reporting to him.

Rakesh Singh, the group head for investment banking and private banking, will also be responsible for marketing, retail liability products and managed programmes.

The current chief marketing officer Ravi Santhanam will now be also responsible for driving digital marketing as a stand-alone delivery channel and also be responsible for retail liability products, the statement said.

Its group head for non-resident Indians, Sampath Kumar will now be in charge of all tele-service relationships, including VRM delivery channel of the bank.

The bank statement said the role of credit, risk, control and enabling functions continue to be critical, and the current leadership would continue in these roles.