Several Founders, Co-Founders, CXO Bankers, CXO Fintech professional & people who participated in the ePanel discussions:
- Mr. Ramesh Ganeshan, President Indusind Bank
- Mr. Madhav Nair, Country Head – India Mashreqbank
- Mr. Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder- Paytm & One97 communications Ltd
- Mr. Sharad Goklani, Senior Vice President- Technology, Equitas Small Finance Bank
- Mr. Arvind Narayanan, Co-Founder Enlearning Skill Development Pvt Ltd
- Mr. Neeraj Chandra Head of Operations, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank
- Mr. Ruchit Jangid, Vice President – eBusiness, Thomas Cook India Ltd
- Mr. Amrish Rau, Fintech Partnership & Investments PayU, Naspers Group
- Mr. Karran Nair, Asst. Vice President, Product Head -Debit Cards
- Mr. Rana Sinha Ray, Head Technology, TimesofMoney
- Mr. Vikas R Panditrao, Co-Founder, Forum of Industry Academic Knowledge Sharing (FIAKS)
- Many other CEO/CXO Bankers & Fintech professionals on FIAKS Forum requested to remain anonymous
FIAKS community member’s raises concerns on the news that mentions HDFC’s CEO Mr. Aditya Puri is soon going to be retired and they’re on a lookout for a successor who’s going to replace him, although there are a great number of extremely talented and hardworking professionals who are already a part of their team, HDFC is keen on keeping their global search open to both internal as well as external professionals. This has caused some of the community members to question and doubt the succession planning that is taking place in large banks and whether or not HDFC is able to sustain and groom their employees in order for them to take up successful leadership roles. “Top CEO’s don’t groom successors and they possibly want to hold on to their jobs for eternity,” say experts. Is that True? Is this the case for most of the top CEO’s? Also looking for an outsider to be the CEO shows that the bank couldn’t develop a successor internally throughout all these years in order to carry forward the current strategy unless of course, they want to make a radical change in the course of their business. On the same hand some of our community members have also raised a question asking why should there be an issue in a global search. This definitely does not exclude the in-house talent. It just means that the bank is looking for the right person, both inside the organisation as well as outside.
An important point to be noted is that it is not an easy task when there are more than one professionals that are fit for the job. For example, how could Mr. K.V Kamat announce a successor between Ms. Chanda Kochhar and Ms. Shikha Sharma presuming both were equal under him? HDFC Bank always has generally focussed much more on the process rather than people. You never get to see or hear about HDFC Bank leaders, except for Mr. Puri. Whenever anyone has quit in their leadership team, Mr.Puri has taken direct responsibility till the person below the leader gets ready for the role and then he automatically gets the job. To be honest ICICI Bank has churned out more CEO’s than HDFC Bank has. Above are disconnected facts, but might have the clue as to why they might search for a CEO from outside of their organisation. One of our thought leaders and founders also say that Mr. Rajeev Jain of Bajaj Finserv would be a great fit to run HDFC Bank so well, infact both Mr. Puri and Mr. Jain are World Class Top Bankers of our generation and they’re both able to run any large global bank. The talent pool in HDFC bank runs pretty deep, while this kind of news keeps erupting let’s remember that they have shrugged off quite a few big names in the recent past like Mr.Paresh Sukthankar and Mr. Nitin Chugh and the juggernaut still rolls on. Mr. Paresh Sukthankar the deputy managing director was one of the choices for the future CEO but he quit when the search for the new CEO was on mentioning some personal reasons that had nothing to do with HDFC bank. Mr. Sukthankar had been working with HDFC since its inception in 1994 prior to which he was working for Citibank. People like Mr.Arvind Kapil and Mr.Parag Rao are completely CEO material and this is just from the retail side, in fact, Mr. Parag Rao sits on the global board of the diners club in India so it doesn’t really seem like they have a talent crunch, knowing how they operate. This might be a red herring when they choose internally but there are others like Mr. Abhay Aima who have been in the business for a long time too. They seem to have an astonishing leadership pool but it wouldn’t still be surprised if they were to get someone from outside of the organisation as well. Another candidate who would be great for this role is Mr.Bhavesh Zaveri and to be honest there are a lot of them. In fact we now know that there are multiple potential successors both working in the organisation as well as external professionals. However, there is an approval process in order to appoint a CEO that any listed company has to undertake whereby being a bank there is a mandatory approval required from the RBI, these processes would now be underway. This also has raised a question on the Board members that while the CEO has fear of losing his job even board members need to think of a good solution in the meantime. Commenting on different solutions is easy but HDFC is a huge company and to manage getting talent from the outside would be a big challenge.
It is not surprising if a successor isn’t identified already, what seems to be an issue is that when a company has the same CEO or even the same top performers every single time, the company becomes very people dependent. That’s one of a major risk for a company to put itself into because there is no fixed duration that the same top performer employees or CEO’s would be around always, working in the same company and instead of relying on the same individuals every single time what another approach could be is learning from the success of those employees and what drives them to excel every single time. In the same way when the company is completely dependent on its CEO in order to function it becomes a major issue once the CEO is getting retired or wants to switch jobs, to then find a perfect replacement for him would be an even greater task had the company not been so dependent on its CEO. This leads to an even greater concern as to why banks need to plan and then execute, not just the minimal but even the bigger decisions, they need to have a proper succession planning in place. It is extremely important to understand the importance of succession planning in the banking as well as in the financial sector. Over the years as the banking sector and various financial services have evolved and continue to evolve over time what will happen is the present CEO’s won’t be there to continue their functions due to retirements and other reasons but they will have to appoint the right successor in their place, in order to appoint a successor a proper succession planning needs to be executed from the beginning. Succession planning among younger professionals needs to be done in order for long term success, companies need to start investing in creating a strategic planning process and need to compensate the same. Succession plans must also include not just a single plan but a number of plans for backup and in case of emergency situations when a leadership role is vacant even though it shouldn’t be having a backup plan is always helpful. Companies should also address the generation gap and the leadership roles that need to be given to younger employees and even the salaries for the same need to be given as per current market prices.
Talent from inside the company needs to be recognized and encouraged, it becomes really important to identify talent among the employees already working in your company. Talent is different among different individuals and needs to be invested in and practiced on, therefore it becomes the responsibility of the leaders to identify the employees who are working hard and actually recognize and reward their efforts. Another important point is that employees should be encouraged and motivated to learn and develop new skills continually, the companies should offer funding for higher education so as to achieve knowledge and practical skills in order to take up higher leadership roles. When companies recognize and acknowledge their own employees first it creates a sense of loyalty among employees towards their company.
In Conclusion, Ms. Anuradha Panditrao, Founder of Forum of Industry & Academic Knowledge Sharing (FIAKS) acknowledges and thanks the FIAKS Community members for their valuable contributions in creating an intellectual pull by participating in the discussions. Mr. Aditya Puri added great value to HDFC Bank over the years in which he served the organization but now it has come time for HDFC Bank to choose their next best successor after Puri, although the bank has many options to choose from both internally and externally it solely depends on the one single choice of person they choose as CEO. Its Best to Hope for the Best !! On the other hand, as succession planning is an important topic for today’s generation which needs to be addressed so as to ensure the best future leaders of the companies, this will only happen if the companies help employees with various opportunities to advance in his field. Employee recognition and promotion must be increased in order to ensure great succession planning.
Future success can only be ensured with today’s efforts!
BIBLIOGRAPHY
https://www.accolo.com/blog/you-need-to-identify-and-develop-talent-inside-your-company/