Kotak Mahindra Bank on Saturday informed stock exchanges that its Managing Director (MD) and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Ashok Vaswani, will not seek reappointment after the completion of his current term on December 31, 2026. The bank’s board has initiated the process of appointing a new MD & CEO, which it said will be completed within the applicable regulatory timelines.
“We wish to inform you that Mr. Ashok Vaswani, Managing Director & CEO of the Bank, has informed the Board of the Bank that, for personal reasons, he does not wish to seek re-appointment upon completion of his current term on December 31, 2026,” the bank said in a regulatory filing.
“The Board has, at its meeting held today, respected his decision and has initiated the process for the appointment of a new Managing Director & CEO. The process will be completed within applicable regulatory timelines,” it added.
A former Barclays executive, Vaswani was appointed MD & CEO after billionaire banker Uday Kotak stepped down in September 2023. He assumed office on January 1, 2024, for a three-year term approved by the Reserve Bank of India in October 2023.
Vaswani is a veteran banker with more than 35 years of experience in global financial services across retail, consumer, corporate and payments businesses. Before joining Kotak Mahindra Bank, he was President of Pagaya Technologies.
Earlier in his career, Vaswani held senior leadership roles at Citigroup and Barclays. At Barclays, he served as CEO of Barclays UK before heading its Global Consumer, Private, Corporate and Payments businesses, where he led the bank’s digital transformation by redesigning its technology architecture and customer journeys. At Citigroup, he served as CEO for Asia-Pacific consumer banking. He has also served on the boards of London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), Visa and the SP Jain Institute of Management and Research.
Vaswani is a commerce graduate, a Chartered Accountant and Company Secretary, and has completed executive education at Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Apart from Vaswani, the bank’s senior leadership now consists of three whole time directors — Anup Kumar Saha, Jaideep Hansraj, and Paritosh Kashyap.
Disclosure: Entities controlled by the Kotak family have a significant holding in Business Standard Pvt Ltd
