Kamath hires an old friend to push the Jio Fin juggernaut | Daily News Byte

Manish Singh, former CEO of ICICI Bank, is the first lateral hire made by Kamath, who was appointed chairman for a five-year term earlier this month.

Singh, currently based in Abu Dhabi, was the chief human resources officer at the New Development Bank (NDB) from 2016 until last year. NDB (formerly known as BRICS Bank) is a multilateral development bank established by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa to mobilize resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in BRICS countries and other developing economies. Kamat previously headed the Shanghai-based bank and Singh was on his team.

Later, Singh moved on. His most recent assignment was as Chief Human Resources Officer for a financial institution in Abu Dhabi.

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“Interest is a big draw to attract talent,” said the first executive, who has worked with both Reliance and ICICI Bank.

“This is the first of the big moves,” said another executive, who is affiliated with a human resources consulting firm. “This is an attempt to bring experienced retail bankers on board.” If (Jio Financials) takes off, we will see more people from blue-chip banks join the financial services arm,” the executive said on condition of anonymity.

Macquarie Research, in a November 21 report titled, Jio juggernaut—Can it rule the roost?hinted at the ambitions RIL Group has set for the new financial services company.

“Post demerger, Jio Financial Services (JFS) could be the fifth largest financial services company in terms of net worth,” the report said.

“RIL would transfer the 6.1% shares of RIL held by its wholly owned subsidiary to JFS. This clearly shows the great ambitions the group has in financial services,” the statement said.

A rough calculation shows that it is worth a 6.1% stake in Reliance Industries today ₹1,06,579 crores ( ₹1.06 trillion).

“The hiring of a senior HR professional at Jio Financial clearly indicates that HR is no longer a part of sharing services and that they will have a strong say in building the business,” said another executive.

“As a policy, we do not comment on individuals joining RIL,” an RIL spokesperson said in response to an email query.

“JFS will be different from most other fintech companies, because it will have access to huge amounts of data, collected from non-financial relationships; can process and analyze this data in real time to offer financial services similar to Alibaba, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. “Also, unlike other fintech companies, JFS will have a large balance sheet, will not be asset light and will ultimately produce the majority of the product offering, which we believe will give it a significant competitive advantage,” McQuarrie said.

Macquarie also hinted that with Kamath at the helm, “the pursuit of JFS growth is likely to be aggressive. Kamath has a legacy of spotting newer markets and opportunities based on his past track record and can grow JFS’s business verticals.”

At the same time, Macquarie said that given that banks have a significant advantage in terms of cost of funds and the ability to do many more jobs that NBFCs cannot, the impact of the JFS on the banking sector could be a little more moderate. “We remain positive on HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank over the long term, and they are our top picks in the sector.” Among NBFCs/fintechs, BAF (Bajaj Finance) and Paitm could be the most vulnerable,” it said.

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