Despite senior level exits over the last few months at Dhanlaxmi Bank, the lender is not planning to appoint replacements, as it looks at saving on costs. The Thrissur-based private lender has decided to take care of various functions people internally, rather than hiring new people.
?We have taken a branch based approach and thus central positions are now redundant. All our branch managers will report to regional heads, who will then report to zonal heads and these zonal heads will report directly to me,? said PG Jayakumar, the current managing director and chief executive officer, Dhanlaxmi Bank.
This is part of a business restructuring plan, which Jayakumar announced after taking over leadership in February. The bank has already reduced its staff number to 2,700 from 4,500 earlier and has managed to reduce its staff expenses by 34% annually, during the quarter ended September 30.
The bank is not looking at hiring many employees this year, as it looks at maintaining leaner operations, Jayakumar said.
In March, the bank had announced large cuts in salaries for current employees to ‘rationalise’ pay scales. The bank will now follow traditional banking methods, as it intends to grow the retail business by increasing gold loans and getting more retail deposits.
Recently, the bank also hired Sagar & Associates as its new auditor, on direction from the Reserve Bank of India.
Dhanlaxmi Bank?s previous auditors, Walker Chandiok & Co, had quit last month, following a disagreement with the bank?s management regarding some aspects of the balance sheet.
