Au Fin will hire 10,000 people in next 18 mths: Sanjay Agarwal

With SBBJ, the last standing bank of Rajasthani origin, on the cusp of fading away into history in its merger with SBI before the year ends, home-grown Au Financiers is gearing up to carry the mantle and keep alive a banking tradition that the desert state had since the pre-independence days. One of the 10 entities in the country to be given in-principle nod for small finance bank, Au is looking to make the transition from a NBFC to a bank by March next year. Sanjay Agarwal, founder and managing director of the company told TOI in an interview that when Au starts operations, the small finance bank will be the second largest private sector lender in Rajasthan after ICICI Bank in terms of branch network. He said the company has already enlisted the services of the best-in-the-business firms like Accenture, O&M, and Aon Hewitt to create its IT landscape, design a new brand image and develop HR practices, respectively. Excerpts…
Last week, you applied for the small bank licence. When will you start operations?
The Reserve Bank of India is expected to give us the approval in 45-60 days. After that we need to have around 28 permissions which are systemic in nature relating to various provisions of RBI. But the process will take two more months. So, we are looking at February-end, 2017 to kick off the operations.
Initially, what would be the size of the bank’s branch network?
Currently, Au has over 300 branches in 10 states. But the plan is to have 400 branches in the first year of operation, with 200 of them being in Rajasthan. That will position us as the second largest private bank in Rajasthan after ICICI Bank. But with a go-to-customer approach, Au Financiers will be very near to customers even in far-flung rural areas as we want to capture the imagination of the people by providing services which are easy, flexible and paperless along with a bouquet of products like Kisan credit cards, letter of credits, gold loans, locker services, ATM facilities, etc. We don’t want to spread ourselves thin. Rather, we will build a critical mass in these unbanked areas to achieve an assets under management target of Rs 50,000 crore from the existing Rs 10,000 crore in the next five years and emerge as the largest retail and SME bank in the country.
What is the current hiring plan?
In the next 18 months, the requirement will be for about 10,000 professionals, which is in addition to our existing base of close to 6000 employees. But more importantly, 40% of the recruitments will be done from Rajasthan where the bank is headquartered. This is a moral commitment for us to give back to the people who have trusted us and brought us to this level. However, as per the 5-year projection, the bank will have 25,000 people. HR consulting partner Aon Hewitt has already joined us for developing a framework to institutionalize the best-in-class practices.
Migrating from a NBFC to a bank requires investment in technology. What kind of investments you have outlined?
Technology landscaping is a big thrust area for which we have appointed Accenture. Besides core banking solutions, we will tap all the digital platforms like online, mobile and wallet services. Technology architecture will alone see investments of Rs 200 crore. Another Rs 150 crore will be for other operations.
Will you have a new logo and create a new brand positioning for the bank?
Au will sport a new logo and the work has already started. The famous Rajasthani Piyush Pandey of Ogilvy & Mather will be supporting us in this venture. The touch and feel of the branches will be vastly different. Small will not only be beautiful, small will be big as well.