Wipro realigns banking, financial services biz along geographical lines

This article has been modified. Please see the correction at the end.

Wipro has split the banking and financial services business on geographical lines. This comes after Rajan Kohli, heading the business, was shifted to manage the new digital business.

Under the new structure, effective from April, Wipro will have two heads responsible for driving the business from their respective regions. They would report to the chief executive and the global head of BFSI, Shaji Farooq.

The move is aimed at better serving the needs of the global client footprint and further improve competitiveness, Wipro said in an internal announcement on Friday.

The first geographic region that would include the key North America market, Australia, India, Middle East and Emerging Markets would be headed by Angan Arun Guha, the company said. Guha, presently a vice president presently manages the Citigroup business unit for the company. Besides, Shailendra Singh, who presently heads Wipro's operations in South Africa would be responsible for BFS business in Europe and South Africa, the company added.

Wipro presently derives around a quarter of its overall revenues from the BFSI segment, much lower than its other large industry rivals such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Cognizant. During the last round of reshuffling in October 2013, Wipro had given the charge of BFSI unit to Shaji Farooq, who joined the company from rival Infosys in August 2012. At Infosys, Farooq was heading the company's BFSI business in North America market.

The present move is expected to help the company is decentralizing client specific decision making at local level while giving Farooq more time to deal with strategic accounts and grow them further.

Recently, Wipro had announced the merger of its Product and Solutions Group (PSG) with that of the BFSI business unit. Subsequently, Balasubramanian Ganesh who was heading the PSG at Wipro had decided to leave the company.

The BFSI business unit has four major divisions including banking and financial services, Capital Market, Insurance and the Citigroup business unit. The Capital market and securities business is currently headed by Roop Singh while Gaurav Chadha is heading the insurance business. It could not be immediately now who has been given the charge of the Citigroup business unit, a major account for the company.

CLARIFICATION
In an earlier version of this article, it was mentioned that Wipro had split its BFSI business along geographical lines which is incorrect. Wipro has split only the banking and financial services business on geographical lines. The article has been corrected and the error is regretted.