BoB World App fiasco: Bank has taken corrective action, says CEO Debadatta Chand

The last few months have been turbulent for the lender after it was accused of serious irregularities in onboarding customers to its BoB World app.

State-run Bank of Baroda has taken corrective action including termination of executives at various levels in the aftermath of finding irregularities in the bank's digital banking operations, said a top executive on November 4.

The bank has taken action on the field and at the corporate level including the termination of Chief Digital Officer (CDO) Akhil Handa in the BOB World fiasco, said Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Debadatta Chand while addressing the media on November 4.

"We have said things earlier also; a couple of things came into media as well, we have taken a large set of actions (including on people on the field). As far as the chief digital officer is concerned, this is termination and currently, we have put someone as CDO," said Chand at the post-results press meet.

Earlier on November 1, the bank in an exchange filing had informed about the resignation of Handa as CDO.

The bank said that Kadgatoor Sheetal Venkatesmurt will take charge along with her existing responsibilities as the head of digital channels and operations.

"As I embark on a new journey, today, October 31, 2023, marks the end of my journey at Bank of Baroda, and I wanted to take a moment to express my heartfelt gratitude to my incredible colleagues for the incredible support and camaraderie during my time here," Handa said in his LinkedIn post.

Chand further added that in the BOB World fiasco, already a lot of action points have started. It's a regulatory action.

"Issue is regarding customer onboarding where some SOPs were not followed. Manipulation process, issues like adequacy of documents; data errors, wrong feeding. Currently, we are engaging with a regulator; so we cannot share any data point on it," the public sector bank's MD & CEO stated.

The last few months have been turbulent for the lender after it was accused of serious irregularities in onboarding customers to its BoB World app.

As per reports, the bank's executives tampered with customer accounts and linked the contact details of different people to show an increase in the number of mobile application registrations.

On October 10, the Reserve Bank of India barred the bank from onboarding customers on the World app.

Subsequently, an internal probe found that several employees fed their numbers for registration and deregistration on the World application without the consent of the customers.

On October 18, Moneycontrol exclusively reported that the bank had suspended more than 60 employees, including 11 assistant general managers, following an internal audit.