BNY Mellon looking to add 1000 more to its 13,000 employee base in India

American bank BNY Mellon is looking to add up to ten per cent to its 13,000-strong employee base in India to serve the global markets, a top official said on Thursday.

The bank's employees are spread across two centres in Pune and Chennai, and handle both operations as well as technological functions.

The announcement comes at a time when some of the back offices in India promoted by global financial majors are facing difficulties with headlines like job cuts dominating largely due to the woes of the parents.

"We will continue to hire on a net basis as we have been doing for the past two years, where we have added 5-10 per cent on a net basis," BNY Mellon International Operations' country chief executive Sudish Panicker told PTI.

He said from an infrastructure perspective, its facilities in Chennai and Pune can handle the additional 1,000-odd people.

The new hires will include both freshers and also laterals, Panicker said, declining to comment specifically if the troubles of peers who might be downsizing are helping its hiring.

He said the company has not been facing troubles with hiring in India and may not want to play an opportunistic play given the overall scenario.

The company is also looking at skilling of its existing staff on digital skills and technologies by creating in-house modules which help the employees' career progress as well, he said.

At present, 30 per cent of its 6,000 people on the operations side have taken at least one digital course and the target is to take the number up to 70 per cent by end of the year.

Panicker said at present, India has a third of the total workforce for the bank globally, which making it the largest single geography outside of North America by staffage.

He, however, made it clear that the bank does not look at head count alone but by the complexity of the work that its employees do here.