Microfinance lender Spandana Sphoorty Financial Ltd. has appointed Shalabh Saxena as the new chief of the company. The appointment follows the exit of founder and CEO Padmaja Reddy earlier this month.
Saxena is currently managing director and chief executive of Bharat Financial Inclusion Ltd., IndusInd Bank Ltd.'s microfinance unit. Ashish Damani, the current chief financial officer of Bharat Financial, has now moved to Spandana Sphoorty as president and CFO. The two will take over their new roles soon, the company said in a statement.
Apart from this, the microfinance lender's board has appointed Abanti Mitra as non-executive chairman. Mitra is currently an independent director on the board. The outgoing Chairman Deepak Vaidya will continue as an independent director, the statement said.
Reddy's controversial exit had led to the appointment of a management committee which is presently taking care of daily business at the microfinance company. In an interview with BloombergQuint, Reddy had alleged that investor Kedaara Capital forced her ouster from the company she founded, due to her opposition with a merger discussion with Axis Bank Ltd.
Providing an update on business and business developments, Spandana Sphoorty said that certain issues related to the management transition are being addressed.
Shortly prior to her resignation, Reddy had transferred the company's IT systems to a new IT vendor and outsourced its management to that vendor. The company is taking steps to engage with this new vendor appropriately and has also made good progress on creating a parallel IT environment, it said in the statement.
It added that some potential concerns have been brought to the board's notice regarding certain gold loan branches of Spandana's subsidiary, Criss Financial Ltd. This accounts for less than 1% of Spandana's consolidated assets under management. The company is in the process of confirming the issues in this regard, it said.
For the quarter ended September, collection efficiency, excluding pre-payments, was at 97%. Disbursals were at Rs 1,150 crore during the quarter, taking assets under management to Rs 7,034 crore on a standalone basis, the company said.
It added that audit of the financial results for the quarter ended September has been resumed, following a brief transition-related hiatus. The company expects to announce results in the next few weeks.
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