Private lender Kotak Mahindra Bank has got RBI approval to elevate Anup Kumar Shah, its current executive director, to the position of managing director and CEO for a period of three years, with effect from 1 January 2027.

Saha, who joined Kotak Mahindra Bank this January, will replace Ashok Vaswani who earlier announced that he would not seek reappointment as MD and CEO upon completion of his term. He will become the third chief of the private sector bank, after Uday Kotak and Vaswani.

As executive director since March 2026, Saha has been handling retail banking, government business, data analytics and marketing functions at Kotak Mahindra Bank.

"Since joining Kotak, he has worked closely with our teams and demonstrated a clear understanding of the opportunities ahead. I am confident that Anup will build on Kotak's strong foundations, deepen its customer relationships and lead the bank forward with purpose and discipline," Vaswani said.

Saha’s background

Saha will be keen to aggressively grow the private lender’s retail franchise, an area where he shares years of experience during his previous stints at ICICI Bank and then at Bajaj Finance. This is in line with Kotak Mahindra Bank’s recent acquisition of Deutsche Bank’s retail lending portfolio. 

While currently heading the consumer banking segment at Kotak Mahindra Bank, Saha, during his nine-year stint at Bajaj Finance between the years 2017 and January 2026, started as President–Consumer Finance. He then moved up as Deputy CEO–Consumer, MSME, Marketing, Operations & Service and Digital platform and as Executive Director, Deputy Managing Director before becoming MD & CEO for four months from April 2025 until his resignation on 21 July 2025. 

At ICICI Bank, where he spent 14 years, he was involved in the credit cards business, among others. He served in senior roles in Retail Secured Assets, Business Intelligence, Retail and Rural Collections, Credit.

Spread across multiple disciplines, Saha comes with 32 years of professional experience, with 25 years being in financial services across banking and non-banking financial institutions. He has a B. Tech degree in Engineering from IIT Kharagpur and has also completed his MBA from IIM Lucknow.

While Kotak Mahindra Bank has closed its top leader appointment, India’s largest private sector lender HDFC Bank is in the process of getting a new chief and has sent two names to the RBI for approval. Kaizad M Bharucha, the bank's current Deputy MD, is the contender emerging from inside the organisation, while Anup Bagchi, CEO of ICICI Prudential Life, is the external candidate.