Tag: coo

Mahindra Finance appoints Raul Rebello as new Chief Operating Officer

Banking & Finance

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Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services Limited (also called MMFSL and Mahindra Finance), part of the Mahindra Group, today appointed Raul Rebello as its new Chief Operating Officer (COO) with immediate effect. This is after the movement of Rajnish Agarwal to Mahindra Rural Housing Finance Ltd (MRHFL).

Rebello is a career banker with nearly two decades of experience in the domain of rural banking and financial inclusion. Prior to joining Mahindra Finance, he was associated with Axis Bank Limited as EVP & Head – Rural Lending & Financial Inclusion.

Also see: SEBI bans Kotak Mahindra AMC from launching FMP for 6 months

Ramesh Iyer, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, Mahindra Finance, said, “It is our pleasure to welcome Raul to the leadership team of Mahindra Finance. As we work deep in the rural market, the next 3-4 years could really be critical with a good rural bounce back, capitalising on all emerging opportunities in the rural market. We are broad basing our management team to be able to handle all our new initiatives, to really go deeper, and make the rural market bigger for us.”

Raul Rebello, COO, Mahindra Finance, said, “I am absolutely delighted to be part of the diversified Mahindra Group and Mahindra Finance in particular. The plans we have discussed for the financial arm and its subsidiaries are challenging, yet exciting. I see significant potential in the combination of my core business expertise and MMFSL’s resident knowledge and people. I am confident that we will add considerable value together and look forward to a mutually rewarding association”.

In his nearly two decades with Axis Bank, Rebello led key businesses including farmer funding, gold loans, MSME lending, commodity loans, tractor & farm equipment lending, agri-value chain finance, microfinance (retail & wholesale) and the financial inclusion department. He also led the business correspondent channel including 15000+ partner outlets and the micro ATM channel of the bank. He played a pivotal role in increasing the banks distribution in rural and semi-urban areas through light format banking outlets, micro-ATMs and rural ecosystem partnerships.

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Deepak Jain to take over as the new Chief Risk Officer of AU Small Finance Bank, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Banking & Finance

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In a regulatory filing of sunday, AU Small Finance Bank announced the appointment of Deepak Jain as the new Chief Risk Officer for a tenure of 3 years.The commencement of his duty will begin September 1, 2021. Jain will restore the position of Alok Gupta the ex chief risk officer who abdicated on personal grounds this year on july.

He has vast and diverse experience and knowledge across accounts, finance, operations, it, audit and risk management. Over the years, he has handled various responsibilities with ease, precision and has always focused on building the robust processes, systems, and control mechanisms for ensuring sustainable and balanced growth of the bankAU Small Finance Bank

Jain is a qualified chartered accountant, with an overall experience of 23 years including 12 years with the bank as CFO and COO. In may 2010 , AU Small Finance Bank Limited appointed Jain as CFO and later designated as COO in April 2020.

“He has vast and diverse experience and knowledge across accounts, finance, operations, it, audit and risk management. Over the years, he has handled various responsibilities with ease, precision and has always focused on building the robust processes, systems, and control mechanisms for ensuring sustainable and balanced growth of the bank,” said AU Small Finance Bank in a statement.

He governed various segments incorporating finance and accounts, taxation and corporate and securities laws; credit processes, operations and information technology; and collections and legal and Infrastructure.

He is also the chairman of some of the board-delegated committees (executive committees), and member of others.



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Understanding future of revamped ARCs in India’s future trillion dollar economy, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Banking & Finance

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Asset Reconstruction Companies were established with the role of providing specialized expertise in management and recovery of non-performing assets (NPA). Ideally, this would allow financial institutions to focus more on optimizing lending instead of difficult recoveries. The high number of NPAs on the balance sheet of Indian banks in the last three years is not fresh news. ARCs are important interventionists and crisis managers who can play a major role in the insolvency and turnaround framework of India. But they are presently like the unetched character of a Bollywood potboiler without the proper chance to shine because the script fails them.

A committee has been set up by RBI to undertake a comprehensive review of and recommend the working of ARCs to meet the growing requirements of the financial sector on April 19, 2021, under the chairmanship of Shri Sudarshan Sen, former Executive Director, RBI. The role of ARCs in relation to NPAs needs to be re-thought allowing legroom for a disruptive role. Just like the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code led to behavioural change in loan repayments, it is necessary that the market behaviour of banks and ARCs is compulsorily modified for them to think out of the box and allow risk diversification. Some of our recommendations are discussed below.

Objective Valuation of Financial Assets: The price bid by ARCs for NPAs does not reflect the true recoverable value of financial assets generally. Acquisition of assets is known to happen at acutely discounted rates which may not be aligned with the bank’s recoverable value let alone the market value of the financial asset had it not been distressed. There is a need for objective guidelines for the valuation of financial assets and prohibition on acquisitions and sales at overtly discounted values.

Concentration limit on retention of security receipts by banks: After acquiring an NPA, the ARC issues security receipts (SR) redeemable on the resolution of NPA. This mechanism is supposed to create risk spread, allow a diverse class of investors and make NPA a tradeable asset. But 80-90% of the SR are held again by financial institutions. Effectually, NPAs never leave the balance sheet of financial institutions but just re-enter through the backdoor. Financial institutions continue to heavily invest in SR despite substantial disincentives in holding SRs above 50%. It is important to create concentration limits on SR holding of financial institutions creating a compulsion to market SR to a more diverse category of investors.

Separate Regulatory Department and Class of Professionals: Some of the least supervised and audited (regulatory) classes of regulated entities in India include ARCs and credit rating agencies. Although the function of ARCs is distinctly different from banks and NBFCs, they presently come under the same regulatory and supervisory department of RBI which is already understaffed and overworked. It is important to acknowledge ARCs and even NBFC-Factors as a separate class of regulated entities from banks, cooperative banks and NBFCs. The ARC sector also needs specialized professionals to provide thought leadership and out of box thinking on NPA management, asset turnaround, investment banking, and valuation just like insolvency professionals.

Third-party funding of dispute resolution and securitization process: Most of the times banks have to take up litigation or arbitration for enforcement of security interest. Such dispute resolution is part of the NPA resolution process and maybe a high cost for the bank. To allow banks to increase their liquidity when required, ARCs should be allowed to act as third-party funders of the cost of litigation or arbitration in lieu of part or whole of a financial asset as a success fee. This form of funding is already well established in other financially mature jurisdictions like United Kingdom, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the USA.

While revitalizing the ARC industry it is important that enough thought is given to creating mechanisms and processes that allow proper shifting and allocation of risks and responsibilities. Unless the risk of NPA actually does not move out of the balance sheet of banks and there is enough regulatory freedom for ARCs for resolution of stressed assets through innovative and out of box structures, the mechanism for NPA resolution is fraught to be dependent on government rescue which is not feasible in the long run for the economy and the industry.

The blog has been authored by Ajaya Kumar Sahoo, COO, Find friends & Independent Director at PC Financial
Services and Kritika Krishnamurthy, Partner BFSI at AK and Partners

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETBFSI.com does not necessarily subscribe to it. ETBFSI.com shall not be responsible for any damage caused to any person/organisation directly or indirectly.



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Northern Arc’s AltiFi.ai to allow individuals to tap debt investment opportunities, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Personal Finance

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Northern Arc has launched an alternative investment platform ‘AltiFi.ai’ allowing individual investors to invest in debt instruments.

‘AltiFi, stands for both “Alternative Financial Investments” and “Alternative Fixed Income”.
Investors will get access to debt capital markets and a range of debt instruments across bonds, securitised instruments and alternative investment funds’ units.

Investors can invest as low as Rs. 10,000 in debt papers.

Northern Arc said, it targets to bridge the gap of access to alternative investment assets and enable individual investors across the country to make direct debt investments at the click of a button.

Currently, individual investors have limited avenues to invest directly in debt instruments of small and mid-sized institutions. Northern Arc said it will bring together its 12 years of experience and well-tested proprietary risk models to create curated and pre-screened assets on the platform. It will also deploy AI and data analytics at scale to gather market intelligence and help investors make the most profitable and risk-adjusted investment calls.

Bama Balakrishnan, COO, Northern Arc said, “AltiFi is our attempt to offer unique debt investment opportunities to individual investors and family offices. Through AltiFi, investors will have access to a diverse range of debt products, in emerging sectors, that were hitherto available only to institutions so far. In India, debt investment opportunities are not accessible like the way listed equity is, and many investors who can potentially subscribe to these debt papers are either not aware of it or don’t know where to buy it from. We aim to change that with AltiFi.”



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ICICI Bank links UPI ID facility to its ‘Pockets’ digital wallet, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Banking & Finance

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ICICI Bank announced the launch of a facility of linking a UPI (Unified Payments Interface) ID to its digital wallet ’Pockets’, marking a departure from the current practice that demands such IDs be linked with a savings bank account. The Bank has collaborated with NPCI to link its ‘Pockets’ digital wallet to the UPI network. This initiative allows users to conduct small-value daily transactions using UPI directly from their ‘Pockets’ wallet in a safe and secure manner.

Customers who use ‘Pockets’ can now send and receive money directly from and to their ‘Pockets’ wallet balance without using their savings bank account. The UPI ID can be used by users of the ‘Pockets’ digital wallet to make person-to-person (P2P) payments, such as sending money to any Individual’s bank account or paying to a contact. They can also undertake person to merchant (P2M) payments like paying online at merchant sites or paying by scanning QR codes.

Bijith Bhaskar, Head- Digital Channels & Partnership, ICICI Bank said, “Our research suggests that users are keen to link their UPI ID with their digital wallet, so that they can directly use the balance in the wallet for smaller transactions while using their savings account only for the larger ones. Armed with this insight, we are delighted to have worked closely with NPCI to introduce this unique innovative solution in digital banking.”

Praveena Rai, COO, NPCI said, “This initiative will further democratize access to UPI and make it ubiquitous with digital payments by allowing consumers to directly pay through their digital wallets, in addition to the facility of paying from their bank accounts. UPI is a one-stop solution to payments of all kinds, both P2M and P2P, and this facility will provide an impetus to the burgeoning digital ecosystem in India.”



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Yono by SBI Joins Hands with Shivrai Technologies, to Launch Small Farm Accounting App, Farmizo Khata, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Banking & Finance

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Business Wire India

Farmizo Khata assisting Farmers of the Future

Shivrai Technologies, Indian AgTech company, recently announced the launch of their B2C Farm accounting mobile application, Farmizo Khata. Joining hands with Yono by SBI, they aim to help farmers across the country to manage their accounts efficiently, thus cutting down on losses. Shivrai also owns their own B2B brand, FarmERP.

Shivrai Technologies recently coined their 25-year mark of incorporation. Known for their formidable solutions in the space of AgriTech, they are all set to dip their foot into the B2C pool. Through this new venture with Yono by SBI, they aim to make their application increasingly accessible.

Farmers incur massive losses due to the lack of knowledge, disorganised book-keeping skills, and inability to manage their expenses in the most profitable manner. To aid this process, Shivrai Technologies partnered with leading digital banking platform, Yono SBI to help smallholder, marginal, and large-holder farmers by way of a free application. This will allow them to focus on their costs incurred, as well as the bookkeeping of total profits that are in line.

This free-of-cost application will not only efficiently manage their accounts but will also give them a platform to analyse and calculate their profits, losses, and expenses, thus enabling them to make wiser purchase, harvest, and production decisions. It is curated in the simplest possible way for smallholder farmers to benefit from it.

Aapki Kheti Ka Hisaab Kitaab- Available on Google Playstore and Appstore, as well as in the form of a digital portal, this accounting software has a simple User Interface and Experience for its audience. Shivrai is offering this software to farmers all across the nation at no cost.

How Does It Work?

Users can create their profile by entering basic information. Post that, the software will guide them to register their plot by entering Plot details and Crop Information. This software will also assist the farmers in Geo-Tagging their crops. In the next step, the farmers would be required to add their expenses incurred on each plot, along with their income details and profit and loss amounts on the software’s dashboard. After doing this, the software would automatically generate the Exact Cost of Production of each crop as per kg and acre. This would include the Auditor cost, the marketing and housekeeping cost, etc. In the end, the software would create a ‘Khata’ with a complete view of all the transactions in a simple ledger.

Sanjay Borkar, CEO and Co-Founder of Shivrai Technologies commented on the launch of the software, “We are very excited to announce the launch of this application. Inconsistent cost sheets, poor calculations of expenses and income, faulty accounts are a pain for farmers, resulting in massive financial setbacks. Farmizo Khata has entered the market with the sole purpose of reducing these financial setbacks for smallholder farmers, in turn increasing their yearly turnovers.,

Under the umbrella of Farmizo, Shivrai also plans on launching applications catering to various sub-verticals within the agricultural industry. In the year 2021, the brand is focusing on the upliftment of smallholder farmers by way of launching various applications personalised for their use. In the coming months, Shivrai is gearing itself to launch its new D2C application. The app that is in the final stages of testing, would be directly selling fresh fruits and vegetables to end-consumers, bypassing all and any third-party retailers or middlemen. In the next two years, the brand has a target to onboard 2 million agricultural stakeholders on their platforms.

Santosh Shinde, COO, and Co-Founder of Shivrai Technologies stated, “We believe Farmizo Khata will pave a way for smallholder farmers giving them the right support they need to make wise financial decisions. This being the 25th year of the inception of our parent company, Shivrai Technologies, we have some exciting projects in the pipeline. Farmizo is one such project that we can’t wait to share with the market.,

Shivrai Technologies is best known for their B2B Farm Business Management Platform, FarmERP. The platform has its presence in over 25 countries today, catering to stakeholders across the entire agricultural value chain. Their comprehensive platform acts as a solution for various agribusinesses and aims to vastly grow in the future with their personalised solutions.



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