Shares of Kotak Mahindra Bank declined over 4 per cent after the company announced the stepping down of banking veteran KVS Manian from the position of joint managing director with immediate effect. Manian been with the private lender for nearly three decades and was recently elevated to the position in a management rejig. The private lender's stock tanked 4.38 per cent to hit its 52-week low of Rs 1,552.55 on the BSE and 4.40 per cent lower to settle at 1,552.40 at the NSE. However, the share prices staged a recovery by nearly 2 per cent in the later part of the session. At 12 pm, shares of Kotak Mahindra Bank are trading 46.50 points, or 2.85 per cent lower at 1,577.60. The news of Manian’s departure came days after the RBI put severe business restrictions on the lender, including stopping it from selling new credit cards and onboarding new customers online citing persistent shortcomings in its tech architecture. As of March-end, the bank has issued 59.54 lakh credit cards. Kotak Mahindra Bank said in its statement that Manian, who has led various businesses, including commercial, wholesale, consumer and private banking, has stepped down with immediate effect. “Serious deficiencies and non-compliances were observed in the areas of IT inventory management, patch and change management, user access management, vendor risk management, data security and data leak prevention strategy, business continuity, and disaster recovery rigour and drill,” the RBI said in a release. As per India’s central bank, the absence of a robust IT infrastructure and risk management framework, the bank’s Core Banking System (CBS) have suffered frequent and significant outages in the last two years.
