The Hindu Business Line : UTI Bank appoints 100 staff for expansion

NOTWITHSTANDING the uncertainty in the air over UTI Bank turning into a foreign bank in the distant future, the private bank continues its recruitment drive.

UTI Bank has recruited close to 100 people after HSBC's announcement to buy 20 per cent stake in it.

The private bank has been on a major recruitment drive this financial year with plans to take on close to a thousand people out of which almost 700 have already joined the organisation. The staff strength of the bank now stands at 3,000 and will end the fiscal even higher.

"Just after HSBC's announcement to buy UTI Bank's shares from CDC Capital Partners in December, 97 people joined the bank. Most of the offer letters that were sent out have been accepted. At the job interviews about 20 per cent of the people enquired about the `HSBC issue'. So we told them that nothing is known about HSBC's future plans other than what has appeared in the newspapers,'' responded Mr S. Bhattacharya, Senior Vice-President, Human Resources, UTI Bank.

The bank is recruiting mostly junior level officers as the bank expands its branch network in an effort to grow its retail businesses. "Most of the recruitments are for branch level staff and some back-end processing personnel, which are positions that are arising as a result of the additional business,'' said Mr Bhattacharya.

The target set for the year-end is a 25:75 business mix of retail: corporate. The bank with the average age of employees at 31 years recruits on campuses from the likes of IIMs, S.P. Jain and XLRI in addition to hiring from other banks.

The mood of the existing staff in the bank is best exemplified by a `wait and watch approach', while a section might be concerned about the uncertainty in the air. "There are way to many `ifs' and `buts' involved in the whole process of a merger with HSBC with the biggest hurdle being legislative changes, so why worry about it now,'' said an employee.

The Government at present permits only 49 per cent of FDI in private banks and limited voting power, both of which would have to be increased for a merger to take place.

On target is also the branch expansion plans; the bank just received about 27 new branches licenses from the regulator. The bank's target is to end the year with 227 branches, 35 more than from the start of the fiscal. Meanwhile, the ATM network has grown by close to 290 machines to over 1,100 ATMs so far this fiscal.

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