About

One of the most significant banks in India, with a recorded $6.2bn revenue for 2016 and over 56,000 employees across approximately 3,000 branches, Axis Bank boasts a large and highly skilled internal legal department of 40 individuals. The legal support for this large and complicated operation follows a ‘dual structured approach’, as general counsel and head of law Damini Marwah explains: ‘Specialised teams comprising subject matter experts service specific practice areas, while we also follow a zonal structure with sub-teams created for each zone across India to cover more common legal matters’. Alongside this, the team has been heavily involved with up-skilling other business units legally by holding ‘comprehensive training sessions’ aimed at advancing this cause. On top of this, process improvements have begun to take effect in the teams’ day-to-day activities. ‘The legal team has restructured its approach towards litigation’, Marwah explains, ‘and to achieve this objective, dedicated legal officers have been assigned to oversee and monitor all critical civil and criminal litigations across India; litigation management software is also being overhauled to bring in greater efficiency in tracking and reporting of litigation across the Bank’. Marwah sums up the team’s positive attributes: ‘The legal team’s strengths are strong domain knowledge, efficient processes, great team spirit and collaborative work approach’.