State-owned banks reported record profits in the second quarter amid multi-year low bad loans.
The stock of some of these banks is up by 20% in the last thirty days and has outperformed Nifty Bank by a decent margin.
Analysts believe that public sector banks may continue their outperformance on a healthy outlook, and the back of multiple positive triggers. They could be in a position to regain some lost ground to the private sector.
While PSU Banks may be on track to get re-rated and shrink the value gap with private peers, they are leaving no tack untried to deliver a consistent experience for their customers across different digital channels.
State-owned banks have got aggressive in their tech hirings to enhance their key digital capabilities in innovative ways, address changing customer needs, and orchestrate transformations to make way for a new digital culture.
Within a gap of a few days, the State Bank of India (SBI) and Union Bank of India (UBI) appointed senior technology leaders to accelerate their respective bank’s IT organization and help scale the digital impact.
SBI appointed Aparna Kumar as its Chief Information Officer (CIO). In her previous role, Aparna was India’s CIO at HSBC. Before HSBC she was associated with HDFC Bank where she worked for around 12 years.
She has also worked in leadership roles with large IT consulting and MNC organizations like Capgemini and I Flex Solutions Ltd.
In another appointment, UBI named Rajnish Khare as its Chief Digital Officer (CDO). Rajnish led executive leadership roles in his previous organizations as Head of Digital Transformation at HDFC Bank, Chief Innovation Officer at Citibank, Head of Direct Banking & innovation at Standard Chartered Bank, and Head of Alternate Channels & Cross Sell at ICICI Bank.
In March this year, (SBI) appointed former Ujjivan Small Finance Bank CEO Nitin Chugh as Deputy Managing Director (DMD) and head of digital banking.
PSU banks have been looking to hire professionals in technology and related areas across specializations and levels. While the specializations cut across risk management, data and analytics, API management to IT infrastructure/cloud, security, UI/UX, enterprise architecture, and mobile development, the levels are from CXO level to engineer/analyst levels.