Even with 20 per cent holding in the Vysya Bank, the ING Group had been influential in making inroads in the restructuring of the bank -- both in terms of the management team as well as changing the bank's organisational structure in the last one year.
"The entire top management has been revamped in the last one year and talent has been brought from both the academic world as well as the industry (both foreign and private sector banks)," said analyst Geeta Chugh of Karvy Stockbroking Ltd.
K Balasubramaniam (managing director) was formerly the country manager of American Express Bank.
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V Raghunathan (president) formerly headed finance and accounting faculty IIM, Ahmedabad. Shantanu Ghosh (chief operational officer) and R S Mani (head risk management) are from Standard Chartered Bank. Robin Roy (head retail banking) and P S Iyer (chief credit officer) are from private sector banks. Ravi Kumar (treasurer) is ex-ABN Amro Bank.
The bank's organisational structure has also undergone change over the last one year, being constituted on the lines of strategic business units (SBUs) as against geographic structure earlier. It has formed five SBUs -- corporate, SME, retail, treasury and rural banking -- in order to capitalise its presence in these areas.
"The bank has initiated the move to overhaul its image and project itself as a retail bank," said bank officials. The bank has identified a niche segment for its growth, which has all along been its traditional forte -- small and medium enterprises (SME) segment.
Over one fourth of the bank's advances are from the retail segment, which stated officials will be the second growth area for the bank.
Currently, 25 per cent of the bank's revenues come from SME and 8 per cent from retail. Analysts project that these segments will see massive growth and 55 to 60 per cent of the bank's revenues will come from SME and retail in four years.
"The bank is reorganising itself for growth and has revamped its management team. It has also geared up its technology, refurbished its branches and has set up a retail distribution arm," said bank officials.
All branches are being refurbished, and vendors have been appointed to standardise the aesthetics of the bank. The bank will also rebrand itself to reflect its association with the ING Group, and be called ING Vysya Bank. Vysya Bank has already adopted the same technology -- Sanchez profile -- as that used by ING globally, as it is centralising its database to facilitate online real-time processing.
The bank has been keen to enhance its bouquet of products from the portfolio of ING Bank, which will be possible when it is technologically prepared.
ING worldwide has grown via mergers and acquisitions. In its pursuit of achieving inorganic growth in India, ING Group will use Vysya Bank as its arm for all acquisitions in the country, pointed out Chugh.
The ING Group through its subsidiary Bank Brussels Lambert (BBL) has been a shareholder in Vysya Bank since March 2001, when it increased its stake from nine per cent to 20 per cent.