Paytm Payments Bank has secured the approval of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to appoint Surinder Chawla as its new chief executive officer CEO, Mint reported.
Currently, Chawla is associated with the RBL Bank and has spent about ten years as the head of branch banking.
Chawla’s appointment as Paytm Payment Bank’s CEO has been on the cards for a while and he has been going through a role transition at RBL Bank for a long time as well, the report added.
Previously, he was associated with the HDFC Bank for over 11 years and held positions like head of retail liabilities product group and senior govt vice-president. He also had short-term stints at Citibank and Standard Chartered Bank.
In October 2022, former CEO Satish Kumar Gupta retired from Paytm Payments Bank. However, the position was filled by Deependra Singh Rathore, senior vice president, as the interim CEO.
Since March 2022, Paytm Payments Bank has been under regulatory scrutiny by RBI. The authority issued an order barring Paytm from onboarding new users, subject to an audit of the payments bank’s accounts.
“Onboarding of new customers by Paytm Payments Bank Ltd will be subject to specific permission to be granted by RBI after reviewing the report of the IT auditors,” the apex bank said in a statement at the time.
The RBI alleged that properly as directed by the central bank’s know-your-customer (KYC) norms. Paytm Payments Bank was not verifying new customers properly as directed by the central bank’s know-your-customer (KYC) norms.
It was also speculated that the payments bank was sharing servers with certain Chinese entities which held an indirect stake in the company, however, the bank denied the same, stating the reports to be ‘sensationalist’.
Paytm Payments Bank is a joint venture between Paytm and its founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma with latter holding a 51% stake in the company.
The payments bank is a scheduled bank under RBI guidelines, as it has been included in the second schedule of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, in December 2021.
