BENGALURU: Cognizant has elevated insurance head Meera Krishnamurthy to lead the banking and financial services sector, which analysts believe is a precursor to other leadership changes at the Nasdaq-listed company.
The company’s relatively low revenue growth in recent times has been driven by weakness in its financial services segment, which contributes over 30% of revenue.
Krishnamurthy joined Cognizant in 2005 and was elevated as SVP and strategic business unit leader for insurance, North America, two years ago. Daniel Cohen, who led the financial services segment, quit in the latter half of 2021.
When TOI contacted Cognizant on Krishnamurthy’s elevation, the company said, “We do not comment on personnel matter.”
An internal video, seen by TOI, that was circulated among employees shows CEO Ravi Kumar in a chat with Krishnamurthy, where Kumar says: “We do not want to run the company on fear. We want to run the company on persuasion.”
Cognizant’s growth in financial services has slowed due to challenges in getting enough people to deliver projects, especially in North America. In the December quarter, financial services revenue declined 1%.
In an interaction with TOI, Rajesh Nambiar, chairman & MD of Cognizant India, said there are a lot of actions within the firm that need to be done differently.
“We need to evaluate if there is an opportunity to do a cost-takeout or vendor consolidation? The entire company is focused on ensuring that we turnaround BFS (banking and financial services), because for our company to grow, we certainly need to make sure the BFS portfolio grows at the same pace as the rest of the company because it’s a significant piece of what we do,” he said.
Last year, TOI had reported that TCS had won some part of MetLife’s business that was previously being done by Cognizant. Sources told TOI that there is some scaling back in the Credit Suisse account, which was around $300 million annually.
Credit Suisse said it does not generally comment on specific vendor relationships. Cognizant too did not respond on this.
Nambiar said the company is strengthening its large deals portfolio.
“It’s important for us to ensure that we have the right set of solutioning and execution capabilities. Understanding how these programmes are managed is important. Ravi’s new leadership and pivoting into larger deals is also our ability to build on what has been cooking within the company for a year or so in large deals. We announced a $1 billion engagement with CoreLogic,” he said.
The company has promoted 35,000 people as part of the internal job moves programme that was launched 1.5 years ago.
The company’s relatively low revenue growth in recent times has been driven by weakness in its financial services segment, which contributes over 30% of revenue.
Krishnamurthy joined Cognizant in 2005 and was elevated as SVP and strategic business unit leader for insurance, North America, two years ago. Daniel Cohen, who led the financial services segment, quit in the latter half of 2021.
When TOI contacted Cognizant on Krishnamurthy’s elevation, the company said, “We do not comment on personnel matter.”
An internal video, seen by TOI, that was circulated among employees shows CEO Ravi Kumar in a chat with Krishnamurthy, where Kumar says: “We do not want to run the company on fear. We want to run the company on persuasion.”
Cognizant’s growth in financial services has slowed due to challenges in getting enough people to deliver projects, especially in North America. In the December quarter, financial services revenue declined 1%.
In an interaction with TOI, Rajesh Nambiar, chairman & MD of Cognizant India, said there are a lot of actions within the firm that need to be done differently.
“We need to evaluate if there is an opportunity to do a cost-takeout or vendor consolidation? The entire company is focused on ensuring that we turnaround BFS (banking and financial services), because for our company to grow, we certainly need to make sure the BFS portfolio grows at the same pace as the rest of the company because it’s a significant piece of what we do,” he said.
Last year, TOI had reported that TCS had won some part of MetLife’s business that was previously being done by Cognizant. Sources told TOI that there is some scaling back in the Credit Suisse account, which was around $300 million annually.
Credit Suisse said it does not generally comment on specific vendor relationships. Cognizant too did not respond on this.
Nambiar said the company is strengthening its large deals portfolio.
“It’s important for us to ensure that we have the right set of solutioning and execution capabilities. Understanding how these programmes are managed is important. Ravi’s new leadership and pivoting into larger deals is also our ability to build on what has been cooking within the company for a year or so in large deals. We announced a $1 billion engagement with CoreLogic,” he said.
The company has promoted 35,000 people as part of the internal job moves programme that was launched 1.5 years ago.
