Ex Reliance Capital CEO plans small finance bank | Economic Times

Former Reliance Capital CEO Soumen (Sam) Ghosh has applied for a small finance bank license through a recently set up firm called Cosmea Financial Holdings.The Maharashtra-based firm was incorporated in November last year.Cosmea aims to involve in activities auxiliary to financial intermediation, except insurance and pension funding. Directors of the company are Soumen Ghosh, Suresh Thiruvananthapuram Viswanathan and Amit Agrawal. Former Reliance Capital CEO Soumen (Sam) Ghosh along with his wife Caroline Ghosh bought this company from Amit Agarwal and Luv Chaturvedi who had incorporated the company as a part of management buy-out from Reliance Securities.This company has no linkage with ADAG group at present and is owned by the Ghoshes in individual capacity, Sam Ghosh confirmed the matter. Cosmea and fintech firm Tally Solutions have applied for a small finance bank licence, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced on Monday.Cosmea and Tally thus joined VSoft Technologies, Calicut City Service Co-operative Bank, Dvara Kshetriya Gramin Financial Services and Akhil Kumar Gupta in the race to set up small finance banks under the central bank's on-tap licensing policy.Gupta, the vice chairman at Bharti Enterprises, applied for the licence in his personal capacity. In March, the banking regulator formed a five-member standing external advisory committee under former deputy governor Shyamala Gopinath for evaluating the applications.RBI's central board director Revathy Iyer, former executive director B Mahapatra, former Canara Bank chairman TN Manoharan, and former State Bank of India managing director Hemant G Contractor are members of the committee.