More
than 1,500 jobs with salaries going up to Rs 1.50 crore will be up for grabs in
the 11 payments banks that are set to start operations over the next
year-and-a-half, headhunters and HR experts estimate.
These
entities will have to start operations within 18 months of getting inprinciple
approval from the Reserve Bank of India. They will be allowed to do limited
banking services - for instance, they can accept deposits, offer payments and
remittance services, issue debit cards and act as agents for commercial banks,
but can't lend. The central bank issued the permits in August.
Five
of the licence holders - Cholamandalam, Department of Posts, National
Securities Depository, Tech Mahindra and Dilip Shanghvi of Sun Pharma - are yet
to hire the chief executives for the payments backs.
As per estimates by Vito India, a domestic executive search firm specialising
in financial services hiring, around 150 senior executives will be hired among
these 11 entities. They are also expected to recruit about 370 mid-level
executives and more than a 1,000 junior-level staff in the next coming months.
Some of the functions for which these firms need talent include product, sales
and distribution, merchant acquisition, strategic alliances, operations, and
regulatory and compliance. For senior executives in these functions, salaries
can range anywhere between Rs 50 lakh and Rs 75 lakh.
"We
expect a spike in demand for talent from liability product teams of transaction
banking; digital product teams of retail banks or ecommerce platforms; and
merchant acquisitions, sales & distribution talent from insurance companies
retail banking and FMCG companies" said Ayesha D'Souza, head of global
banking and markets at Vito India, which has been hired for search assignments
by some of these payment banks. "Salary for CXOs (CEOs and other
management-level executives) is in the range of Rs 1-1.5 crore while for a
level below it is around Rs 70 lakh to Rs 1 crore," said Kalyani Shastry,
associate director at RGF Executive Search.
"There
are two things mainly bothering the management of payment banks - one is
technology and the other is the governance and risk piece. A significant thrust
of the hiring is on the technology piece and hiring is happening from different
parts of the ecosystem, with lot of talent coming from the cash management side
of banks and some from FMCG and other sectors," Shastry said.
Those
who have got the approval include Airtel M Commerce Services, Fino Paytech,
Reliance Industries, Paytm, Vodafone M Pesa and the Aditya Birla Group. The
Birla group's payments bank has already got its team in place. "We have
our people in place ... we look for banking, consumer and technology-oriented
people," said Santrupt Misra, director, global HR & CEO, carbon black
business, at the group. The entities are looking for talent internationally as
well, including from places such as Singapore and Silicon Valley where people
have worked with disruptive products, said K Sudarshan, managing partner and
co-founder, EMA Partners.
"Talent
is being hired from across the ecosystem with a big thrust on technology and a
lot of product and strategy people coming from companies in the Silicon
Valley," he said. In terms of people, the payments banks are looking for
very different types of talent from what the traditional banks would look at,
including people with technology expertise, product thinking and innovation,
and also people who understand markets beyond large urban areas.
"Talent scarcity will be seen especially in product roles, regulatory
& compliance roles, business solution teams where the pool will emanate
from a select few banks, therefore pushing up both demand and compensation.
This will further lead to some musical chairs in the banking industry early
next year, once mid-senior level talent gets poached by these six to eight
players" said Vito's D'souza.
With
the government pushing for these payments banks to ensure that unbanked masses
are brought into the formal banking fold, more such licences can be expected in
the future. Of the total 41 applicants who had applied for the licence, only 11
were awarded a permit for the time being.
Calling
it a significant and important step from the RBI, finance minister Arun Jaitley
had said he expected payments banks to reach out to people in rural areas.
"Payments bank will ensure more money comes into banking system. Various
banks are looking at increasing their rural reach, including big banks like
SBI. Payments banks will help them realise this," Jaitley had said.
Source:-The
Economic Times
