Blazing through a tough terrain: Murali Natrajan, DCB

When Murali Natrajan, the global head for SME banking in Standard Chartered Bank, put in his papers to join Development Credit Bank (DCB), many of his colleagues and counterparts in the industry were surprised. However, for people who knew him well, this was expected: Mr Natrajan is known to be a hands-on person rather than one who commands from his ivory tower.

What was not so easy to understand, though, was his choice of DCB. The position itself is a challenge. He will have to deal with multiple issues ��� a balance sheet which has been showing stress, specially in retail banking, miffed shareholders who have seen the value of their investments drop and also sagging employee morale. DCB was earlier a small cooperative bank that managed to convert itself into a private bank in 1996. As a result, even some of the old private sector banks are larger than DCB.

The bank is presently engaged in a cost-control exercise and is looking at various administrative and employee expenses. DCB has already reduced its headcount by over 11% in the past one year. This will
be one area of focus for Mr Natarajan, as he has to grow business with lesser resources.

Before taking over as the global head of SME, Mr Natrajan was the head of consumer banking for India and Nepal. Incidentally, StanChart is among the very few banks which still has a profitable retail business in the country and insiders credit him for this. He is a fellow member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and started his career with American Express TRS in India where he worked for five years before joining Citibank in 1989 where he spent 14 years. He joined StanChart in October 2002 to head the mortgage and auto business.

Mr Natrajan feels that he will be able to start growing the balance sheet after around 18 months and he expects the problems in the personal loan portfolio to stabilise in the next six months. However, he says that his primary aim is to grow DCB cautiously, as the bank has already faced challenges two times in the past four-five years.
Other than being impatient, Mr Murali is said to be one of the few people who calls a spade, a spade. A great fan of Hindi movies, his former colleagues say that he likes to weave in a film plot even into a
business discussion.

For someone who is said to be very humorous and famous for one-liners, Mr Natrajan will have to use it to motivate his staff. This will be one of his toughest assignments. He will have to show some signs of stability in the balance sheet before the bank looks at a rights issue later this year when the market stabilises. Hopefully, like in Hindi movies, he will emerge the hero. At least, that���s what his former colleagues think.