A war of words over BoB's mobile app fiasco

livemint.com:

Bank of Baroda (BoB) management and its former chief digital officer (CDO) over the weekend around irregularities in signing up customers through its mobile banking app bob World. On 12 October, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) barred BoB from onboarding new customers through the app until its deficiencies were rectified and processes strengthened. Chief executive officer (CEO) and managing director (MD) Debadatta Chand said on Saturday that the bank had terminated the contract of its CDO, Akhil Handa, as part of a wider action against employees both at the branch and corporate office levels.

Handa, meanwhile, claimed that he had resigned on personal grounds, and the bank was just “deflecting from its operational lapses" by saying it had terminated his contract. “We have taken action on a large set of people on the field. As far as the (erstwhile) CDO is concerned, it is a cessation of service induced by the bank, and that is a termination," Chand said.

The bank’s stock exchange notification on 31 October described Handa’s exit as “cessation of employment" as head of the digital lending business but did not call it a termination. To this, Handa clarified on Saturday that his exit was a personal decision and he had served a three-month notice period since August. Mint has seen a copy of his resignation letter marked to the bank’s human resources department dated 9 August.

“The narrative of termination seems a deflection of operational lapses at the branch level issues," Handa wrote in a mail to Mint. “Mobile banking onboarding process is controlled by the operations department methodology that requires mobile number seeding. The mobile number seeding is a pure branch-level process governed by the maker and checker process