Meena Hemchandra

Dr Meena Hemchandra is a career central banker with over 35 years of experience in various departments of Reserve Bank of India. She was Executive Director of Reserve Bank of India in-charge of Supervision of Banks, Non-Banking Finance Companies and Cooperative Banks from June 2015 till her superannuation in November 2017. Her earlier experience includes treasury management, having headed the Department of External Investment and Operations (a department that manages the country’s forex reserves) between 2005 and 2011. She also has expertise in foreign exchange regulations having worked in the Foreign Exchange Department at various points in her career. She has in-depth understanding of corporate governance and corporate balance sheets having worked in departments relating to large corporate finance, supervision over banks and from her long board tenures. Her Board experience of over nine years includes Reserve Bank of India nominee directorship on the Boards of Union Bank of India, Canara Bank and ECGC. She also held directorial positions with Suryoday Small Finance Bank Limited and CFM ARC Pvt. Ltd post retirement. Presently she is an independent director on the Board of Clearing Corporation of India Limited.

She has strong skills in IT governance having established the ‘Standing Committee on Cyber Security in Banks’ in RBI and being its first Chairperson. She oversaw the framing of RBI guidelines on cyber security in June 2016.

She had also been the Principal of the Reserve Bank’s College of Agricultural Banking organising training courses in Agriculture and Rural Credit, Co-operative Banking, Financial Inclusion, Financial Literacy etc.

She advises on banking sector regulation, financial matters and cyber-security/IT governance in banks.

Dr Meena Hemchandra holds Bachelor of Arts (Economics) from Calcutta University; Master of Arts (Economics) from Madurai Kamaraj University; PhD in Economics from Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune (Thesis-‘An Early Warning Framework for Financial Stress’). Her executive education includes EDP on Advanced Risk Management from Wharton (USA), CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) (India), CAIIB. Diploma in C++ Programming from CMC, and 1-year PG programme (online) in Data Science and Business Analytics (University of Texas-Austin/Great Lakes Institute-Delhi).

She was appointed as Non-executive Independent (Part-time) Chairperson of the Bank for a period of three (3) years from the date of taking charge as approved by Reserve Bank of India. She had taken charge on 25th July 2022 and holds 2,500 equity shares in the Bank.