YES Bank is on a hiring spree at the very senior level.
The country's youngest private sector lender has strengthened its top management team with nine high-profile bankers in the past couple of months. The recruitment drive has seen YES Bank roping in senior bankers from ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and Standard Chartered Bank.
Pralay Mondal, who was the country head for retail assets and credit cards at HDFC Bank, joined YES Bank on Wednesday. Mondal was a key figure in HDFC Bank's senior leadership team and instrumental in growing the bank's retail assets.
In 2011-12, for instance, the share of retail loans in HDFC Bank's total advances increased to 55 per cent from 52 per cent a year earlier.
At YES Bank, Mondal is the senior group president and will lead branch banking, business banking and retail. He will also be responsible for increasing the bank's market share in products such as savings account, pre-paid cards and debit cards.
His deputy in YES Bank, Chitra Pandeya, was also with HDFC Bank. Pandeya joined YES Bank two months earlier as the senior president for savings account, cards and direct banking.
YES Bank was also able to convince senior bankers at ICICI Bank to leave the country's largest private sector lender. Amit Sethi, head of the business technology group at ICICI Bank, joined YES Bank this month as senior president and chief information officer.
Prerana Langa, who was vice-president at ICICI Foundation, joined as head of The YES Foundation recently.
From Axis Bank, K Ramachandran moved to YES Bank. He was appointed as the president of investment advisory and equity research, in April. He is responsible for designing wealth products and solutions for the bank's high net worth clients. He was heading the investment advisory services at Axis Bank.
Foreign banks also had their share of losses to YES Bank. In May, Malcolm Athaide, who was the head of credit underwriting at Standard Chartered Bank in India, shifted to YES Bank as president of risk management in retail and business banking.
Venkat Krishnan V, who was with HSBC, recently joined the private lender as chief technology officer.
The bank appointed Namita Vikas as president and country head for responsible banking in May. She was with Marico Innovation Foundation. Jayan Menon was hired to lead transaction banking services business from e-Serve, a subsidiary of Tata Consultancy Services.
YES Bank has also seen some senior level exits in recent months.
Sonu Bhasin, group president for branch banking, resigned last week, sources said. She had joined YES Bank in August 2011. It is learnt that Rajagopal Srivatsa and Kavita Venugopal have left the bank in recent months. Srivatsa was the group president for liability management and transaction banking, while Venugopal was the group president and chief risk officer.
A spokesperson of YES Bank declined to comment for this story.
In its "Version 2.0" strategy, which spreads from 2009-10 to 2014-15, YES Bank aims to have 12,000 employees across 750 branches. The target has now been revised to 12,750 employees and 900 branches.
The bank had 5,642 employees as of March 31, 2012. It has increased headcount by 2,608 people in the last two financial years.
About one per cent of the bank's employees are part of the top management team, while 3 per cent are in senior management positions. Middle management has 23 per cent of staff, junior management has 29 per cent and the rest 44 per cent are in general positions.
The bank has also hired 174 professionals for middle and junior management roles from top management schools in recent months. The average age of the bank's employees is 29 years.
