Civil Services Exam

Kamath set out to establish new horizons for ICICI. He cut his teeth in the big league when the Reserve Bank of India reduced the reserve requirement for the banking sector in the face of crashing interest rates. Between 1996 and 1998 he set about buying large non-banking finance companies, ending in the acquisition of the Bank of Madura. He went a step further in 2003 by amalgamating the parent institutional lending agency, ICICI, with the ICICI Bank, civil services exam is the largest merger deal at the time. To make the merger possible and meet the central banks reserve requirements, ICICI had to raise a whopping Rs 230 billion. As a corollary, it had to create a new secondary market for securitized loans amounting to over Rs 80 billion. It also had to liquidate its sticky loans by bargaining hard with defaulters and using innovative deals such as land for loan repayment. The strategy proved successful and ICICI came out on top. Kamath stresses: There are several goalposts you set for yourself and reaching those becomes the most satisfying moment for that point of time. The merger between the parent company and the bank we wanted to achieve right from 1996 and when it happened it was a very significant goal post. All the opportunities civil services examination is planned to bring as a bank have been possible because we were able to achieve the status of a merged entity.Everything prior to that had been moving toward this ultimate goal, including a listing on the New York Stock Exchange in 2000. Once he had achieved his first big milestone, Kamath was ready to embark on his expansion strategy with a vengeance. His belief in the strength of technology ensured that ICICI was way ahead in terms of hardware and software capabilities. The centrality of technology in ICICIs success is reflected in the fact that Kamath had adopted the role of Chief Information Officer as part of his duties at the bank. He explains. I naturally like to observe things and learn from them. It was obvious that technology costs as in the West were not viable for us, but by the mid-1990s as the power of PCs and stand-alone systems started growing, costs fell by half and we had the answer to our technology challenge. We decided this is what we will bet on, stood steadfast in acquiring these systems and it proved the right thing to do. Ultimately, I was responsible for technology. It was my neck on the line. We decided we had to run technology in a radically different way so we dont have a technology department or a glorious title like CIO. Technology is embedded in every aspect of the business and the head of the business runs the technology. There is a small group that reported to me and we would discuss any critical plan in technology, be it hardware or software.This hands-on approach to technology extends into the field of training and flows into his very own work ethic of bias for action.