The assignment begins where the audit opinion ends
The Audit Committee Chair must help the Board decide whether the institution's numbers, controls and conduct evidence tell the same story. A clean opinion is necessary; it is not a substitute for judgement about credit quality, technology dependence, management override, emerging fraud or the reliability of customer-facing processes.
The successful candidate will chair a committee whose agenda includes financial reporting, internal audit, statutory audit, whistle-blower oversight and related parties, while also participating in risk, stakeholder and CSR deliberations. The role requires the confidence to keep an issue open when formal closure is not supported by changed behaviour or durable control evidence.
Five lines of inquiry will define the chairship
1. Credit truth. Provisioning, classification, cure, upgrades, recoveries and write-offs must be reviewed as a connected system. The Chair will ask for movement analysis, model performance, overlay governance and retrospective testing. Portfolio averages must not obscure segment or channel deterioration.
2. Digital ledger integrity. The committee will examine how core systems, interfaces, automated journals, user entitlements and end-user tools shape the accounts. Reconciliations should identify age, value, root cause and customer consequence. Access exceptions and privileged activity need accountable closure.
3. Third-party boundaries. Technology, sales, verification, collections and customer service may be outsourced; accountability is not. Audit scope must follow data and process into material vendors. Concentration, subcontracting, business continuity and exit feasibility should reach the committee before a dependency becomes irreversible.
4. Fraud and speak-up. The Chair will oversee fraud taxonomy, investigation independence, privilege, reporting thresholds, employee and vendor conflicts, and protection against retaliation. Whistle-blower closure should be assessed for investigation quality and systemic learning, not merely case count.
5. Stakeholder credibility. Complaints, disputed transactions, reporting corrections and regulatory observations are evidence about control design. As a member of the Stakeholders Relationship Committee, the director will press for root-cause remediation that can be verified across the next reporting cycle.
How success will be judged
By the end of the first year, the committee should have a risk-ranked assurance universe, cleaner ownership of cross-system reconciliations, explicit tolerance for overdue high-risk findings, a documented approach to accounting overlays, and direct visibility into the small set of vendors and technology components capable of disrupting financial or customer integrity. Auditor sessions should produce sharper decisions, not longer minutes.
Candidate standard
The Board welcomes former bank CFOs, senior audit partners, banking CROs, regulators, controllers and leaders of material remediation programmes. Candidates need working command of Indian financial reporting, prudential expectations, cyber-enabled fraud and board audit practice. They must be willing to understand systems and customer processes at sufficient depth while preserving the boundary between oversight and execution. Prior Audit Committee chair experience is strongly preferred. Appointment requires statutory independence, DIN and Independent Directors' Databank compliance.
Allow for eight to eleven meeting days, preparation around every reporting cycle, private auditor sessions and short-notice engagement where a financial, cyber or regulatory event is potentially material.
Application note
Applications should present committee-relevant evidence rather than a general biography: two or three decisions personally governed, the information used, the challenge made, and the resulting change in risk, capital, control, succession or stakeholder outcome. Shortlisted candidates will undergo independence, conflict, capacity, DIN and databank verification before any confidential market approach.