Bandhan Bank MD & CEO Chandra Shekhar Ghosh To Step Down In July

Bandhan Bank Ltd. said its Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Chandra Shekhar Ghosh will retire from the services after completing his current tenure on 9 July.

“After leading the bank for almost a decade, including three consecutive tenures as MD & CEO, I feel that the time has now come for me to assume a larger strategic role at Bandhan Group level,” Ghosh said in a letter to the bank’s board.

The Kolkata-based lender didn’t provide the details about the successor of Ghosh, who has been the MD & CEO of the bank since 10 July 2015.

“I am neither an economist nor a banker. I am a pure NGO (non-governmental organization) worker,” Ghosh said, while describing the journey of building the institution from an NGO to an NBFC and finally a universal bank.

Ghosh said he set up Bandhan in 2001 as a non-governmental organization (NGO) to meet the dual objective of women empowerment and poverty alleviation. In 2006, Bandhan acquired a non-banking finance company (NBFC) and named it Bandhan Financial Services Ltd. (BFSL), which carried on microfinance activities, while the NGO continued with development work, he added.

BFSL became the largest microfinance institution in the country in 2010, Ghosh said, adding that he and the company jointly applied for a banking license in July 2013.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) gave an in-principle approval in April 2014 for setting up the bank and Bandhan Bank was launched on 23 August 2015, with 501 branches and 50 automatic teller machines (ATMs) spread across 24 states, Ghosh said.

He noted that Bandhan was the first ever microfinance institution to become a universal bank in India and the first private sector bank to be set up from the eastern India after Independence in 1947.

Ghosh said that 2018 saw the listing of Bandhan Bank on the bourses and in 2019, the acquisition of Gruh Finance took place to provide more affordable banking solutions to home buyers.

Bandhan Bank has now spread its presence to 35 states and union territories in India with more than 6,200 banking outlets serving around 3.2 crore customers, according to its website.

(Send feedback to editor@cornerofficejournal.com)