Yes Bank appoints two more executives from HDFC bank

Mumbai: Yes Bank Ltd, India’s fifth largest private sector bank by assets, has hired two executives from HDFC Bank Ltd as it seeks to expand its business by launching credit cards and widening the diversity in its loan book.

It has appointed Rajanish Prabhu as senior president and national head for the credit card business set to be launched in the first quarter of the next fiscal year, the bank said in a statement on Tuesday. Before HDFC Bank Ltd, Prabhu was card payment company Visa Inc.

The bank has also hired Ratan Kesh as senior president and country head branch service delivery. At HDFC Bank, he was a senior vice president.

Pralay Mondal, senior group president, at the bank will now also head the commercial banking business in addition to his present portfolio which included retail banking, branch banking and lending to small enterprises.

Commercial banking business will include rural lending and lending to medium-sized businesses. Mondal too is a former HDFC bank executive and joined Yes Bank in 2012.

“(His) expanded portfolio is to leverage internal synergies as part of unified leadership responsibilities,” Yes Bank said. Commercial banking business was earlier a part of Yes Bank’s wholesale business, a bank spokesman said.

Retail banking, including business banking, accounts for 32.2% of the bank’s loan book as at 30 June, the spokesman added.

Chitra Pandya, another former HDFC Bank executive, will henceforth be in charge of all liability products of the bank. The changes “will maximize internal synergies as these businesses further scale-up over the next 5 years,” Yes Bank said in a statement.

The bank has made the mobilisation of granular liabilities as the top priority as it targets to expand its network to 1,500 branches by 31 March 2018 and further to 2,500 by March 2020.

“This will significantly augment retail/ current and saving account deposit mobilization and consumer SME lending activities,” the bank said.

The bank has also divided its urban branch banking business into two parts with Narendra Dixit as branch banking head-North & East, and Akshay Sapru for the western and southern regions of the country.