Banking Central | Why don't we have more women bank CEOs?

State Bank of India (SBI) chairwoman Arundhati Bhattacharya speaks during an interview at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Russia, June 2, 2017. REUTERS/Grigory Dukor - RTX38O0R

There aren’t too many women bank chief executive officers (CEOs) in the Indian banking industry these days. Among the public sector banks (PSBs), there is only one woman CEO—Padmaja Chunduru of Indian Bank. In the private sector, not even one big lender has a woman CEO. There are three names in the foreign bank group—Zarin Daruwala of Standard Chartered Bank, Kaku Nakhate, President and Country Head, Bank of America, and Kalpana Morparia of JP Morgan. Morparia retires later this year.

This wasn’t the case until a few years ago. There were many more women CEOs in the country across bank groups. Arundhati Bhattacharya was leading the country’s largest bank, State Bank of India (SBI), Chanda Kochhar was the CEO of private giant ICICI Bank and Shikha Sharma was at the helm at Axis Bank. Usha Ananthasubramanian was the CEO of Allahabad Bank and Naina Lal Kidwai the head of HSBC India.

Among the women who led the banks, most have an impeccable track record. Morparia is one of the women to have played an instrumental role in building ICICI Bank. At ICICI, she handled multiple responsibilities like treasury, legal divisions insurance and asset management.

After retiring as joint managing director from ICICI Bank in 2007, Morparia took charge at JP Morgan in 2008 as the world battled an unprecedented financial crisis. She has had a good run at JP Morgan as well.

Similarly, in September 2013, Bhattacharya became the first woman to head SBI. During Bhattacharya’s tenure, the state-owned lender technology platforms advanced several notches, her former colleague said. She loved gadgets and worked to integrate banking services with new platforms.

Seven years later, Bhattacharya took over as the India head of cloud-based service provider Salesforce.com Inc, the US technology firm that wants to create more than 500,000 jobs and $67 billion in new business revenues in India through 2024, according to a 2019 report by International Data Corporation.

Chanda Kochhar was the core team of ICICI Bank that built the retail division from scratch and nurtured it to a formidable financial institution. Kochhar, however, exited the bank under the shadow of corruption, dragged into the Videocon loan controversy involving an alleged quid pro quo deal between Videocon and Kochhar’s husband, Deepak’s firm. Kochhar recently got bail in a money-laundering case.

Why aren’t more women CEOs coming on board these days? Industry experts and bankers do not have clear reasons to offer. Some say that there is fierce competition for top positions.

Do women need special institutions dedicated to them? In 2013, the United Progressive Alliance government set up a Bharatiya Mahila Bank (BMB). The idea was that it would be a bank for women by women. The bank grew to 103 branches with Rs 1,600-crore business in three years but it didn’t last.

In April 2017, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government decided to merge BMB with State Bank of India. Experts say if women's empowerment is the idea, exclusive institutions are not the solution. Instead, organisations should shed gender bias and let women grow.

In the largely male-dominated banking industry, the broader institutional approach towards women executives in terms of leadership opportunities has changed over the years. Women today stand a better chance to head a big bank than they did a few decades ago. For real empowerment, women should be offered equal opportunities, and not a special institution, to realise their potential.

(Banking Central is a weekly column that keeps a close watch and connects the dots about the sector's most important events for readers.)