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RYDr. Rajiv Yadav

Institutional Resilience and Risk Oversight

Resilience built into the institution, not added after the crisis.

The resilient institution is not necessarily the one that experiences the fewest shocks, but the one that learns, adapts and responds fastest. Resilience should be embedded into strategy and organisational capability rather than treated as a response to crisis.

Turnaround

The AIG Retail Bank turnaround, Thailand

Brought from Delhi to Bangkok to assess a distressed portfolio, with an initial diagnosis due within three days, Dr. Yadav then led the bank as COO/CIO and Board Director.

>USD 8M
recovered in the first year
USD 5.5M
reduction in operating costs
USD 28M
improvement in profitability

What the diagnosis found

  • Decentralised credit assessment
  • Deteriorating collections
  • Manual processes
  • Losses on remarketing repossessed vehicles

What was done

  • Centralised credit assessment and remarketing
  • Implemented new loan origination, loan management and collections systems
  • Aligned operating procedures to the revised processes and technology
  • Introduced performance-linked incentives for Collections, approved by management and the Board
  • Established weekly and monthly reviews against targets

Not a single employee was retrenched as a result of the transformation initiative. The principles that held: timely diagnosis supported by evidence; engaging the people who deliver the change; processes, systems, incentives and oversight reinforcing one another; and continued performance review so improvements outlast the turnaround.

Risk oversight

Seeing deterioration before it reaches the headline numbers.

By the time deterioration reaches headline NPL/NPA numbers, the problem may have started much earlier. Boards need data granularity to challenge management: analysing exposure by origination vintage, geography and branch to see when and where deterioration began and to tell systemic issues from localised ones.

Collections is more than a recovery function: it gives early intelligence on underwriting, products and customer behaviour. Good risk governance enables intervention well before deterioration becomes visible in the financial statements.

Leading indicators for the Board

  • Early delinquency
  • First-payment defaults
  • Roll rates
  • Vintage deterioration
  • Underwriting exceptions

From identified risk to resolution

  1. 1Identify the risk
  2. 2Name the responsible owner
  3. 3Agree mitigation, decisions and timelines
  4. 4Monitor progress and residual exposure
  5. 5Escalate when tolerance is exceeded or authority is beyond management’s remit

Institutional transitions

Fixing a running train

A major turnaround or post-acquisition integration has to be run while the institution keeps serving customers and delivering results. Boards should empower the transformation team to execute, starting from a brutally honest diagnostic of financials, asset quality, customers, people, processes, technology and culture, with clear milestones, decision rights and escalation mechanisms, and visibility to challenge assumptions without stepping into management’s role.

Consolidation at Vietnam International Bank

Consolidated operations across 117 cities and 500+ employees, strengthening governance, standardising processes and enhancing operational controls across the branch network.

Board-aligned scorecards at Krungsri

Instituted Board-aligned performance scorecards and enterprise management controls to strengthen operational resilience, regulatory alignment, business continuity and management oversight across regulated banking subsidiaries.

Monitoring, reporting and learning

Reporting explains not only what happened, but where performance is diverging from expectations, why it matters and what action is required. Corrective actions carry an owner, a timeframe and a follow-up review, and repeated weaknesses prompt a search for root causes rather than repeated treatment of symptoms.

Connected Board oversight

Modern risks do not respect committee boundaries, but Board structures often do. Information must flow horizontally across committees, with clarity on which committee leads a cross-cutting issue and what requires full Board oversight. Effective governance is not created by more committees; it comes from better-connected oversight and clearer accountability.

Read the full Board Stewardship interview

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