Umesh Jain
CIO
Yes Bank
InformationWeek
11/8/2011 5:42:04 PM
The YES BANK is a new bank on the block. It has quickly expanded operations and ascended to a respectable position in the industry, thanks to its innovation and bold technology initiatives (it was one of the first banks to embrace BI). The jury felt that, under Umesh Jain’s leadership, YES BANK has taken many innovative initiatives, all having direct business benefits in terms of productivity enhancement and cost optimization. For example, the integration capabilities with corporate customers helped the bank provide faster and efficient services to its customers. To keep costs down, the product was built using innovative technologies (cost of per rollout was reduced to 50 percent). The product was also recognized in The Banker magazine from the Financial Times. Jain has developed strong teams; his reportees are presently CIOs in several companies. YES BANK has won several awards, many of these coming to Jain himself.
Of his 10 years in the industry, Jain has spent the last four at YES BANK. Previously, he was at Citibank. In his current role, he is responsible for fortifying the bank’s technology edge and to continue its growth trajectory supported by technology-led innovations. Jain is also responsible for driving innovation projects, and developing strategic planning guidelines in accordance with the business strategy of the bank, leveraging and building upon best in class technology as a key pillar and differentiator of YES BANK.
Acknowledging his significant contribution to the bank, one jury member said, “Umesh has a lot of domain expertise and is converting fairly complex technologies like BI, mobile money services and identity management for business benefit. He has embraced new technologies like virtual desktop, private cloud, etc. So I see a lot of potential from Umesh for driving change in the business environment.”
There are a number of business benefits to Jain’s credit. For instance, during the recession he brought down the technology expense from 15 percent opex to 9 percent opex, which translates to a saving of USD 5 million — and the bank’s business grew by almost 50 percent during that period.
Jain helped in conceptualizing and implementing the IT capability framework and in taking most processes from maturity level 0 to key high level areas. These include business alignment, technology governance, technology management, strategy, innovation, project portfolio management, application management, infrastructure management, vendor & financial management, architecture, risk management, and information security.
Umesh is instrumental in devising business strategy for mobile banking, social media and BI. He has led projects to transform the entire process chain from customer acquisition to customer service and customer retention. This is being effectively managed through three in-house conceptualized applications: The CRM System, the Business Intelligence platform and Insights 2 Engage. The latter is YES BANK’s in-house initiative to develop a holistic single interface to view all customer details and information about customer relations. This enables the bank to understand the customer better, thus enabling various bank users to generate crossselling opportunities (among many other benefits).
Jain is currently engaged with setting up a private cloud, implementing virtual desktop, BI (phase 2 & 3), Insights 2 Engage (phase 2 & 3). He reports to the CEO and is a part of the key Executive Management Committee. This means he is a part of all strategic discussions, and is aware of all strategic initiatives at the bank. He is also a permanent member of Mancom (the highest executive committee), the Asset Liability Committee (ALCO) and a permanent invitee to the board committees (Audit & Compliance).
Jain also has other responsibilities such as the Technology & Business Solution Group. This domain includes retail banking, wealth management, cash and payments, trade finance, financial markets, risk, and microfinance, operations for all domains. The Enterprise areas include HR, finance and all other functions of the bank.
Apart from that, he is responsible for the technology infrastructure – the data center, networks, hardware and software..
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