Prasanth kumar
“For any bank, having a sustainable deposit base is the most critical ingredient.” Big rescue “The biggest challenge when I joined was to stop the outflow of deposits,” Kumar said. He spoke to about 10-15 of them daily, stressing that Yes Bank now also had the backing of SBI. Kumar set aside an hour a day during the first two months to call depositors to reassure them personally about the bank’s stability. The bank suffered an outflow of 1.04 trillion rupees ($13.9 billion) in the six months through March, about half its total deposits. Since starting as CEO, Kumar, 59, has made restoring the faith of Yes Bank’s depositors a priority. It was a very different challenge than handling money at SBI.” “Confidence of people, customers and even employees was shaken,” Kumar said. The central bank organized a bailout led by SBI after Yes Bank suffered a run on deposits on concern about its massive bad-loan portfolio. The only concern came from his wife, who Kumar says was “shocked” that he had resigned from his safe post at the government-controlled SBI, where he was chief financial officer.Īnother failure of a financial institution would have been “catastrophic,” Kumar said of Yes Bank’s rescue, which came following the collapse of two shadow lenders. Kumar had little hesitation in accepting the position of chief executive officer of Yes Bank Ltd., the lender that was teetering on the edge of insolvency before being bailed out that month at a cost of $1.3 billion. “The first thing that came to my mind was where was the address,” he recalled. He was offered the job of rescuing the country’s most troubled private-sector bank, and - if he accepted - told to report for work at 8 a.m. Mumbai: Late in the evening of March 5, Prashant Kumar took an unexpected call from his boss at State Bank of India.