An HR professional with more than 20 years of experience, Santanu Banerjee is turning a new leaf in his career. He has joined Star Union Dai-ichi Life Insurance as executive VP & CHRO.
Star Union Dai-ichi Life Insurance (SUD Life) is a joint venture between two of India’s leading public-sector banks (Bank of India and Union Bank of India) and Dai-ichi Life Holdings, a leading life insurance company in Japan.
With a robust collective network catering to million of customers, SUD Life has one of the largest life insurance distribution footprints in India.
Banerjee is a trained coach who believes in mentoring people to bring out the best in them. Before joining SUD Life, he was employed by Hathway Cable & Datacom as CHRO. That was a short stint of less than a year for him.
He spent a large chunk of his career (ten years) with Aditya Birla Health Insurance, where he rose up the ranks to become the head-HR. Before that, he has also worked with Kantar, Exide Life Insurance and Pantaloons.
HRKatha spoke to Banerjee about his new job and future plans.
“It has been an exciting month and a half, putting processes and systems in place, building manpower capacities, especially in sales, where there was a shortage. The next steps will be productivity and then sustainability,” says Banerjee.
“Being a ten-year old organisation, most of its practices and policies are updated; the objective is to tweak a little to enhance them,” he adds.
Having graduated from Calcutta University, Banerjee completed an MBA in HR from the Army Institute of Management, Kolkata. The insurance sector has been the most dominating industry of his career.
“In the financial services sector, HR plays a pivotal role in business growth through talent acquisition and performance management. In this industry, HR has a direct bearing on business,” says Banerjee.
Having worked in the IT and telecom sectors before, Banerjee’s love for the financial sector stems from the fact that it is one sector where HR plays a strategic role in bridging the gap between capacities and productivity, thus actively participating in business development.