Asian Banking & Finance and Insurance Asia Summit - Philippines - March 11, 2025

Mr. Kalidas Ghose is the Chairman of the Uno Digital Bank, Philippines and also the Chairman, of Uno Asia, Singapore. Uno was among the list of exclusive Fintech organizations who were issued the digital banking license and became the first fintech to be launched as a digital bank from the start in this region and probably in the world. In a short span of two years from being awarded the license, Uno has been able to incorporate the bank, build a tech platform that has received regulatory certification, launched the business and scaled up to nearly 400K customers through a combination of organic and inorganic distribution channels and numerous successful partnerships with online and offline businesses in the market. It aims to break even by 1Q2024, less than 18 months from market launch. 
Before assuming his role as the Chairman of Uno Bank, he was the  Chief Executive Officer of VP Bank SMBC Finance Company Limited which operates under the brand name of FE Credit and is the largest consumer finance company in Vietnam, the fastest growing in South-East Asia with strong plans for  transforming into a digital bank in the future. It is a joint venture between VP Bank, one of the most successful private sector banks in Vietnam, and Sumitomo Mitsui Finance Group, one of the largest and diversified financial groups in the world. Till 2022, FE Credit has served more than 25M customers and disbursed loans to more than 14M unique customers in order to achieve around 50% share of the consumer finance market in Vietnam with more than $3B in receivables and $ 1B in revenues per annum. FE Credit also enjoys the distinction of being the issuer of the highest number of Credit Cards in Vietnam.till 2022 with more than 2.3M cards issued in 6 years. 
Kalidas is a Retail Banking and Consumer Finance veteran with more than 30 years of experience in leading the build out of successful businesses in global institutions across various emerging markets in India. He joined VP Bank as the CEO of the Consumer Finance Division in April 2011 soon after the business was launched earlier that year and concurrently held the position of the Head of Retail Banking Division till May 2015. During this period, he nurtured the growth of the Consumer Finance business while leading the Retail Banking division through historic transformation projects that ultimately led to the establishment of the most successful businesses in their respective categories in Vietnam. The consumer finance business was spun off into an independent legal vehicle and Kalidas moved to it as the CEO of the newly formed company in early 2015. 
Since the inception of the consumer finance business as a unit in VP Bank, Kalidas has led the journey to build one of the most successful consumer-facing financial services franchise in the whole of South East Asia. He has achieved this by developing a comprehensive suite of products distributed through a very large and diversified network supported by a best-in-class risk management framework and a cutting-edge technology platform. He has the reputation for building a highly motivated management team of talented and experienced leaders from both the local and overseas markets who have come together as a team to deliver superior business results in one of the fastest growing major markets in the world. 
While FE Credit grew admirably since its start in 2011 to become the undisputed leader in the consumer finance industry in less than 4 years, Kalidas realized the importance of pivoting to a highly digitalized business model in 2017 as the way to the next wave of strong growth and sustainable success in future. He has personally led the transformation of FE Credit since early 2018 by digitalizing every aspect of the business model starting with customer touch-points at the front-end to the operations process at the back-end and even supporting functions like talent acquisition and people management with the creation of a highly capable Analytics platform making a strong contribution towards achieving the goals. Under his leadership, FE Credit continues to gain market share by adopting world-class technologies, be it contact center digitalization for customer engagement or a fully automated lending platform which has reduced the turnaround time for loan approval process from 4-5 days to under 20 minutes. 
In July 2019, Kalidas was honored with the “CEO of the Year” award from the Asia Pacific Customer Service Consortium as a testimony of his vision and leadership in building the organization with strong customer loyalty, brand image, sustainable financial performance and a customer centric culture. 
In 2021, FE Credit witnessed a watershed event in its history when the globally renowned Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Inc. decided to invest 49% equity for a valuation of $2.8B, the highest investment from Japan in any Vietnamese financial institution. This was a significant recognition of their achievement for which the FE Credit under his leadership is justifiably proud of. 
Kalidas started his career in 1992 in Credit Operations for Retail Banking with Citibank N.A. in India and was subsequently promoted to the Head of Secured and Unsecured Lending for Southern India before being appointed as the Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of CitiFinancial India, the consumer finance vehicle of Citibank across various markets. He then moved to the Philippines as the President and CEO of CitiFinancial, a business he was able to turn around in a short span of time before merging it with a local savings bank acquired by Citigroup in 2005. In 2007, he was appointed as the founding CEO of Prudential Finance, the first fully foreign owned consumer finance business in Vietnam. He joined ANZ as the General Manager, Retail Banking and Wealth Management for Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in 2010 before joining VP Bank in 2011. 
Kalidas has an MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur and a graduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from Jadavpur University, both leading institutes in India. He currently lives in Ho Chi Minh City with his wife and twin daughters. Reading nonfictional books and collecting fountain pens are two of his main hobbies when he is not busy with his profession.