{"id":45849,"date":"2024-05-08T09:47:39","date_gmt":"2024-05-08T09:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/08\/kotak-plans-to-hire-400-engineers-to-ramp-up-tech-transition-times-of-india\/"},"modified":"2024-05-08T09:47:39","modified_gmt":"2024-05-08T09:47:39","slug":"kotak-plans-to-hire-400-engineers-to-ramp-up-tech-transition-times-of-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/08\/kotak-plans-to-hire-400-engineers-to-ramp-up-tech-transition-times-of-india\/","title":{"rendered":"Kotak plans to hire 400 engineers to ramp up tech transition – Times of India"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Kotak<\/div>\n
NEW DELHI: Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd. plans to hire around 400 engineers this year as it races to upgrade its technology<\/a> systems after coming under the regulator\u2019s scrutiny for lapses.
The lender, backed by Indian billionaire Uday Kotak, has already brought on board more than 500 engineers from scratch over the last two years, according to Milind Nagnur, the bank\u2019s chief technology officer.It has pulled them from firms like Google and Amazon.com Inc. as well as from Paytm and PhonePe Pvt., Nagnur said in an interview.
With the hires this year, the bank will have achieved a \u201ccritical mass\u201d in talent and additions would be gradual after that, he said. India\u2019s fourth largest private lender boosted spending on technology by more than 30% to 17 billion rupees ($204 million) in the year ended March 31, making up about 10% of operating expenses, according to Kotak\u2019s Chief Executive Officer Ashok Vaswani at a press briefing over the weekend.
The team will be seeking to overcome a ban imposed last month by the Reserve Bank of India on adding new customers through its digital channels and issuing fresh credit cards. Kotak\u2019s governance and risk management in its technology systems are in the spotlight as the regulator had singled those out as among the reasons behind its action.
\u201cWe are going to just double up, put far more efforts, far more resources, far more money into moving this thing as fast as possible,\u201d Vaswani said. The spending is expected to rise as the bank deepens its technology build-out, he said.
Nagnur was among Kotak\u2019s most high-profile technology hires, alongside Bhavnish Lathia, its chief of customer experience, both of whom joined in 2022. Nagnur previously worked at the US-based fintech company Early Warning Services LLC, while Lathia spent nearly two decades at Amazon.
\u201cWe do worry about everything that you see and hear,\u201d said Nagnur in comments before the RBI ban. \u201cWe have to worry about cyber risk, we have to worry about operational risk, human errors in sending payments to the wrong person, or geographic risk, credit and debit card frauds.\u201d
The bank is using artificial intelligence in areas like fraud risk management, rewriting customer chat bots for better service and for sentiment analysis on the bank, leading to faster resolution of problems, said Nagnur, who recently expanded his role to also become chief operating officer.
About 98% of the transaction volume in Kotak\u2019s savings accounts were by digital or non-branch methods, according to its most recent investor presentation for the third quarter. The bank sold 95% of new personal loans by volume and 99% of new credit cards digitally in the same period, highlighting the challenges of maintaining this growth pace with the RBI ban.
The regulator said it found deficiencies and non-compliance in Kotak\u2019s various processes over two years \u2014 from a lack of data security and leak prevention strategies to vendor risk management. It said it had engaged with the bank but \u201cthe outcomes have been far from satisfactory.\u201d
\u201cWhat really is changing is the backend where we are going deep into resiliency, uptime, cybersecurity,\u201d said Nagnur. \u201cWhile the digital transaction volumes are exponentially growing, you have to be substantially ready in the backend to handle these type of volumes.\u201d<\/div>\n