Executive search · Financial services & fintech

Financial services and fintech executive search in India

Director to CXO mandates for banks, NBFCs, fintechs and capability centres. Confidential where it needs to be. Built on a mapped market and individual approaches, not a database query and a covering note.

Discuss a leadership mandate

Why leadership hires in this sector go wrong

A senior mis-hire in financial services is not a recruitment cost. It is eighteen months of a function drifting, a team quietly leaving around the problem, and a board conversation nobody wants. The direct fee is the least expensive part of the mistake.

The two failure modes are consistent. The first is translation error. Banks and fintechs use the same words for different scopes, so a "head of risk" from a bank arrives at a fintech expecting a governance function and finds an operating one, or a fintech product leader arrives at a bank expecting to ship and finds a committee. Both are competent people placed against a title rather than a remit.

The second is that the best leadership candidates in Indian financial services are not on the market. They are two years into a mandate, well paid, and not answering a generic approach. Reaching them is not a sourcing exercise. It is knowing who they are, what would actually move them, and having a reason for the conversation that is worth their time.

Both problems are solved before any candidate is contacted, in the mapping and the calibration. That is where the weight of this work sits.

How a leadership mandate runs

  1. Calibration with the reporting line

    Not a job description review. A conversation about what the function has to be true in two years, what the last holder of the seat did or did not do, and which of those things is actually a hiring criterion. We also establish who decides, because an undefined internal panel kills more leadership searches than candidate supply does.

  2. Market map

    Who holds this remit across comparable institutions in India, at what scope, and how each of those firms structures the function. You get the map whether or not the search concludes, because it is useful to you either way, including for deciding the role is better filled internally.

  3. Individual approach

    Direct, specific, and confidential where required. Under a confidential mandate we describe the opportunity by accurate segment rather than naming you, so a candidate can self-select without the market learning that the seat is in play.

  4. Argued slate

    A small number of candidates, each with a written case covering scope match, translation risk between their current firm type and yours, and the compensation reality of moving them. Where we have a reservation, it is in the document.

  5. Close and land

    Offer structuring against live market data, counteroffer preparation before it happens rather than after, and engagement through a notice period that at this level commonly runs 90 days or more. We follow up for 90 days after joining.

What to expect on timing and terms

Mapping and first approaches typically run three to five weeks. Notice periods at leadership level in Indian financial services commonly run 90 days and sometimes longer, so a realistic brief-to-desk timeline is four to six months. A firm promising materially faster at this level is shortlisting people who are already looking, which is a different and much smaller population.

Commercially, executive search runs on a success fee structured per mandate. We take a small number of active searches at a time, and we will decline a leadership mandate where we do not believe the sector fit or the internal decision process supports a good outcome. Declining is cheaper for both sides than a search that runs for five months and closes with nothing. If you are weighing this against a retained arrangement, the trade-off is set out in full in retained vs success-fee executive search.

Executive search: common questions

At what level do you run executive search?

Director and head-of-function level is the centre of gravity, and we take CXO mandates selectively where the sector fit is right. Below director we run the same rigour through our standard specialist search rather than a separate executive process.

Can a leadership search be run confidentially?

Yes, and many of ours are confidential by default, particularly replacement mandates where the incumbent is still in seat. We run the full process without naming the client until the final stages, using an accurate segment descriptor so candidates can still self-select sensibly rather than being approached blind.

How is this different from a contingency recruitment agency?

The work starts with a mapped market rather than a candidate database. For a leadership mandate we build the picture of who holds that remit across comparable institutions in India, form a view on who is genuinely movable, and approach them individually. The output is a small, argued slate, not a stream of profiles.

How long does an executive search take in Indian financial services?

Mapping and first approaches typically run three to five weeks, longer where the market is small or the brief is unusual. Notice periods at this level commonly run 90 days and occasionally longer, so a realistic brief-to-desk timeline is four to six months. Anyone promising materially faster is either shortlisting the actively-looking or has not understood the level.

Do you cover fintech as well as banking leadership?

Both, and the crossover between them is a large part of the work. Banks hire from fintechs for product and engineering leadership, fintechs hire from banks for risk, compliance and governance leadership, and each side systematically misreads the other's seniority signals. Knowing how a title at one translates to the other is the substance of the mandate.

What do you need from us to start?

A calibration session with whoever the role reports to, an honest description of why the seat is open, and a defined decision panel. Leadership searches fail more often on an undefined internal decision process than on candidate supply.

Send a brief

A leadership seat you cannot afford to get wrong?

Tell us the remit and the constraint. If we are not the right firm for it, we will say so in the first conversation.

  • Read by a senior member of the team, not an intake queue
  • A reply within one working day: the realistic candidate pool, the pay band, the timeline, and whether we are the right partner
  • Success-fee: you pay only when the candidate joins

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