Talent Management at ICICI Bank

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"Leadership is the ability to handle the job at the next level with comfort. Being able to perform your future role in the present. It is especially important in an industry like ours where people are our most important asset, and we depend on people for growth. When your business focuses on growth, grooming talent is crucial".

- Chanda Kochhar, Chairman and MD, ICICI Bank Ltd., in 2010.

"The bank's leadership in the industry is exemplary. But nothing to compare its ability to spot, groom, and deploy leaders in-house".

- Indrajit Gupta, editor, Forbes India & George Smith Alexander, reporter at Bloomberg , in 2008.

ICICI Bank Ltd. (ICICI Bank), the India-based financial banking institution, began a process of identifying and nurturing talent in the 1980s. This practice paid rich dividends, with ICICI Bank becoming known as a powerhouse of leadership talent. Ever since N Vaghul (Vaghul) became the chairman and MD of Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India Limited (ICICI) in 1985, the bank had fostered a culture of nurturing young talent. Vaghul brought in a fresh and different approach to working in the organization. He involved younger people at the bank in big projects unlike CEOs of other organizations who preferred to pick senior level managers.

This was a bid to develop a talent pool at the bank. Vaghul’s way of empowering young people, nurturing talent, and developing a leadership pipeline became part of the bank’s culture and was carried forward by former CEO and MD, KV Kamath (Kamath) and present CEO and MD, Chanda Kochhar (Kochhar).

Kamath who joined ICICI Bank as CEO and MD in 1996, created an incredible talent for spotting employees with leadership potential. He was instrumental in grooming several people who later took up key positions at the bank. Kamath nurtured people with potential leadership at the bank by moving them from one assignment to another and making them take up different leadership roles and serving the bank. Commenting on Kamath’s ability to nurture talent, Kalpana Morparia (Morparia), former joint managing director, ICICI Bank, said, "Mr Kamath has an amazing ability to pick a leader and identify potential way beyond what the people believed in. Less than 20-25% of us had any clue where we were headed in our careers."

Kamath’s vision was to enable ICICI Bank to surge ahead and capture a vital share of the market. He planned to create leaders within the organization who could foresee opportunities ahead of others.

The mentoring process started with picking young employees who had joined the bank as management trainees and giving them hard-to-achieve targets to test their potential. Employees passing the test were promoted to lead senior-level positions.

The success of the mentoring process led to the bank institutionalizing a formal leadership development process that identified talented employees through a performance appraisal system after which they were assessed for future leadership roles.

Experts felt that the bank's successful transformation from a lending financial institution to a retail powerhouse could be attributed to its mentoring and leadership development process.

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