Ashok Vaswani, who took over as Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd.'s chief executive officer and managing director on Jan. 1, summarised his first 45 days as "exhilarating, energising and inspiring", in a LinkedIn post.
Vaswani said his focus has been meeting team members, understanding various businesses, the opportunities and challenges, meeting the regulators, and putting in place a process to develop a strategy for Kotak Group.
"Along with the fantastic team and leadership, I'm committed to taking Kotak to its rightful pre-eminent position in the most vibrant economy in the world, with a deeper focus on customer-centricity," he said in the post on Wednesday.
(Source: LinkedIn account of Ashok Vaswani)
The post comes two days after Kotak Mahindra Bank announced a major rejig in its top management, with KVS Manian redesignated as joint managing director and Shanti Ekambaram as deputy managing director, effective March 1.
Currently, Manian and Ekambaram are full-time directors at the bank.
Devang Gheewalla and Milind Nagnur have also been appointed as chief financial officer and chief operating officer, respectively, from March 31 and April 1, according to an exchange filing.
Paul Parambi, who currently serves as the bank's chief revenue officer, has also been promoted to the position of group CRO from March 1.
In his career spanning nearly four decades, Vaswani has worked as a retail banker at Citibank and Barclays. Between 2004 and 2007, he served as the consumer banking CEO at Citibank's Asia Pacific division. After the global financial crisis, he was appointed as chief of cards at Barclays in Europe, and then Africa.
In 2012, he worked as the CEO of Barclays' retail banking division in London, and later took on the role of CEO for Barclays U.K. Between 2021 and July 2022, when he retired, Vaswani was designated as chief digital officer of the bank.
Post that, he has been a president at a U.S.-Israeli artificial intelligence company, Pagaya.
The banking industry is awaiting how Vaswani's belief in the power of technology in financial services and the need for artificial intelligence is going to play out for Kotak Mahindra Bank.
"I've heard that financial services companies, when you add it up, spend more money on technology than technology companies do. I think the real secret is in moving the culture and mindset of the organisation—and that's where the people question comes in," Vaswani said in a note in June 2019.
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