Equitas Small Finance Bank names Manish Agrawal president finance and readies a stronger growth engine

Equitas Small Finance Bank has added a seasoned operator to the control room. Manish Agrawal steps in as president finance with a clear brief to tighten financial stewardship and accelerate the bank’s digital and reporting backbone. The timing is smart. Small finance banks are scaling into mainstream portfolios and the winners will be the ones that pair responsible growth with clean, timely numbers and resilient systems.

Agrawal’s toolkit is built for that job. A chartered accountant by training with twenty seven years of experience, including two decades inside banks, he has run the full stack that matters to a modern finance function. Financial reporting that closes on time and tells a coherent story. Management and regulatory reporting that withstands audit glare. Budgeting and controls that protect margins while funding expansion. Plus IT initiatives that pull finance out of spreadsheets and into live systems where risk and performance can be seen in the same dashboard.

Prior roles sharpen the edge. At a large private bank he led the bank and group finance function through consolidation and complexity, which teaches discipline on inter company flows, capital allocation and disclosure standards that regulators trust. Earlier stints across global consulting and Indian banking gave him the habit of turning policy into process and process into predictable outcomes. That is exactly what a fast growing franchise needs when it wants to move faster without tripping on its own shoelaces.

What changes first for Equitas customers and investors. Expect cleaner disclosures and more frequent insight into unit economics by product and region. Expect a sharper view of cost to income and return on assets as the bank balances growth in unsecured and secured books. Expect stronger early warning systems so credit costs stay boring even when originations climb. Inside the walls, expect finance to sit at the same table as product and technology so pricing, risk and growth decisions share the same truth.

The one hundred day checklist writes itself. Stabilise a single source of truth for data flowing from core banking to finance. Publish a discipline around monthly close and a public quality bar for reporting timeliness. Map regulatory reporting to automated controls so handoffs are logged and repeatable. Tighten treasury and liquidity monitoring so funding costs are visible and predictable when the market moves. Start a rolling program to simplify charts of accounts and reduce manual reconciliations that slow decision making on busy days.

For lenders and partners the signal is positive. A stronger finance office makes co lending cleaner, securitisation smoother and analytics richer. For employees it usually means clearer scorecards and faster approvals because workflows are standardised instead of negotiated. For customers it should translate into simpler statements, fewer surprises on fees and faster turnarounds on service requests that touch payments, pledging and settlements.

Risks are practical and known. Transformation fatigue is real if teams are asked to change everything at once. The answer is sequencing. Fix the data spine first, then the controls, then the pretty dashboards. Another risk is the classic tension between growth and prudence. The way through is to price risk honestly, ring fence experiments and publish the rules up front so branch and digital teams play the same game.

What should observers watch to judge progress. Look for steadier net interest margins despite rate churn. Look for credit cost discipline without throttling originations. Look for opex that grows slower than assets because processes are getting simpler. Above all, look for timely, granular disclosures that make boardrooms and investors comfortable with scale.

Bottom line. Equitas Small Finance Bank has hired a president finance who thinks like an operator and builds like a technologist. If the first quarter brings faster closes, cleaner reports and friendlier customer facing finance journeys, the bank’s growth story will read stronger and safer at the same time.

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