Former BoB executive Akhil Handa says he wasn't terminated

Bank of Baroda head of digital lending business Akhil Handa

Public sector lender Bank of Baroda's (BOB) former chief digital officer (CDO) Akhil Handa on November 4 said he had resigned and was not terminated.

"My exit was a personal decision that I conveyed to the top management in August and since then I have been serving my notice period. The narrative of termination seems a deflection of operational lapses at the branch level issues," said Handa in a statement to Moneycontrol.

Moneycontrol has reviewed the resignation letter of Handa dated August 10, 2023. In the letter, he clearly mentioned that he would serve a notice period of three months.

Handa issued the statement after Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Debadatta Chand while addressing the media on November 4 said the bank had taken action on the field and at the corporate level including the termination of Handa over the BOB World fiasco.

"We have said things earlier also; a couple of things came into media as well, we have taken a large set of actions (including on people on the field). As far as the chief digital officer is concerned, this is termination and currently, we have put someone as CDO," said Chand at the post-results press meet.

Handa further added that the mobile banking onboarding process is controlled by the Operations department methodology that requires mobile number seeding.

"The mobile number seeding is a pure branch-level process governed by the Maker and Checker process at the branch offices level," he added.

He also noted that the BoB World application has no issues and is in fact ranked within the top mobile banking apps in India.

Earlier on November 1, the bank in an exchange filing had informed about the resignation of Handa as CDO.

The bank said that Kadgatoor Sheetal Venkatesmurt will take charge along with her existing responsibilities as the head of digital channels and operations.

On October 10, the Reserve Bank of India barred the bank from onboarding customers on the World app.

Subsequently, an internal probe found that several employees fed their numbers for registration and deregistration on the World application without the consent of the customers.