Independent Director Candidate · Bengaluru
Every risk a board accepts should arrive with a price, a limit, and a name written beside it.
On what a board should expect from its risk function
Twenty-one years in credit and market risk, the last seven as Chief Risk Officer of a mid-sized private-sector bank. Now a candidate for the boards of listed companies, banks, NBFCs and insurers.
The story
Kavita Suryanarayan came to risk through mathematics. Two decades later, she believes the most useful risk tool a bank owns is a plain conversation, held before the numbers force one.
She read mathematics and statistics in Bengaluru, took her management degree at IIM Bangalore, and joined the India operations of a global bank in 2005 as an associate in corporate credit, writing appraisals for mid-market borrowers. Within two years she was building the scorecards and portfolio analytics the bank used across its corporate and retail books, and leading a workstream in its Basel II programme.
In 2011 she moved to Mumbai to run market risk for the rates and foreign-exchange desks. The work was limits, value-at-risk and stress tests, and the daily conversation with traders about why a limit exists. As a member of the asset-liability committee she saw how quickly a funding question becomes a board question.
In 2015 she joined a mid-sized private-sector bank in Bengaluru as Head of Credit Risk, and in 2019 became its Chief Risk Officer. For seven years she wrote the risk appetite statement, owned the internal capital adequacy assessment and reported to the board's Risk Management Committee every quarter, while sitting with the Audit Committee as a standing invitee.
She now wants the seat across that table. On a board, her aim is the one she held in the risk office: that directors see the real risk position clearly, early and in plain numbers, and that someone asks the second question.
Defining moments
2013 · Mumbai
In a hard summer for the rupee, the foreign-exchange desk asked for a temporary increase in its limits. Kavita declined, set out her reasons to the asset-liability committee the same afternoon, and agreed a staged plan to bring positions down. The way that request was handled became the bank's template for escalation.
2017 · Bengaluru
Her rebuilt early-warning system for the SME book joined account behaviour with what relationship managers were hearing from borrowers, so stressed accounts reached the credit committee while there was still time to act. She also set up a model validation unit reporting outside the business, so no scorecard was checked by the team that built it.
2021 · Bengaluru
As unsecured retail lending grew quickly, she asked the board to approve concentration and vintage limits before the book outgrew them, and gave the Risk Management Committee a quarterly view of how each new cohort of borrowers was performing. The business kept growing, inside limits the board had set in advance.
In her words
I turn a board's appetite for risk into limits a business can actually run by.
Wrote the risk appetite statement a bank's board approved, then reported against it to the Risk Management Committee for twenty-eight consecutive quarters.
I read the judgements that sit behind reported profit.
Seven years as a standing invitee to a bank's Audit Committee, working with internal and statutory auditors on asset classification and provisioning.
I ask the second question when the first answer is too comfortable.
Took a bank through two supervisory inspection cycles, and ran market risk for a global bank's rates and FX desks, where the comfortable answer is the one to test.
Board readiness
Seven years presenting the risk position to a bank's board risk committee, and author of the risk appetite statement it approved.
Standing invitee to a bank's audit committee; worked with auditors on classification and provisioning judgements.
Sponsored the bank's operational and cyber risk framework, including incident escalation to the board.
Designed the risk-adjusted measures used in senior management scorecards and variable pay reviews.
Education
B.Sc. Mathematics and Statistics, Bengaluru2003Post Graduate Programme in Management, IIM Bangalore2005Financial Risk Manager, GARP2009
Registered in the IICA Independent Directors Databank, 2026.
An invitation
If your board wants its risks priced before they arrive, I would be glad to talk. A board profile, references and a full CV with employer names are available on request.