MUMBAI: India’s women bank bosses are disappearing. ICICI Bank said on Monday that its chief executive, Chanda Kochhar, would go on leave pending a probe into her alleged misconduct over awarding loans. If she departs permanently from the $28 billion lender, the sector would lose its third high-profile female bank CEO in just months.

Whatever the outcome, it looks increasingly unlikely Kochhar, who has led the bank since 2009, will have her term renewed when it ends early next year. Her exit would follow Shikha Sharma who in December will step down after ten years atop Axis Bank. She had recently had her term extended to 2021, but local newspaper reports said the central bank had asked the board to reconsider this.

Both banks have struggled with bad loans and shareholder returns have underperformed peers. At the other end of the spectrum, Arundhati Bhattacharya retired as chief of State Bank of India last year after four solid years at the helm of the country’s largest lender.

Performance aside, it’s a blow for diversity. There were only 24 women CEOs in the S&P BSE 500 index, according to a study published in June by Institutional Investor Advisory Services (IiAS).

The presence of Bhattacharya, Kochhar and Sharma, along with female heads of the unlisted local operations of Morgan Stanley and Standard Chartered, made gender diversity look like less of a problem in financial services. However, top bankers were overwhelmingly male, too, even before the exodus.

Things are better at the board level, with 13 percent female representation as of March 2017 in the NIFTY 500, another important index, but a big improvement only came after regulators required listed companies to have at least one women director. Although the rules are unlikely to tighten further anytime soon, a report backed by IiAS says companies should target 20 percent by 2020.

Changing the broader dynamic looks tough. While New Delhi increased paid maternity leave last year from 12 to 26 weeks, that is not much help in a country where barely one-quarter of women are in the workforce, down from 35 percent in 1990. In the meantime, females who aspire to one day occupy the corner office will have fewer role models to emulate.

India’s ICICI Bank said on June 18 that Managing Director and Chief Executive Chanda Kochhar would go on leave until an independent probe into alleged misconduct is completed.

It added that Sandeep Bakhshi would be appointed as a director and as chief operating officer of the country’s third-largest private sector lender by assets. ICICIs executive directors and management will report to him, essentially leaving him as the interim head. Bakhshi has run ICICI Prudential Life Insurance since 2010.

Local media reports have claimed Kochhar, who has been CEO since 2009, favoured Videocon Group, a consumer electronics and oil and gas exploration company. Videocon’s founders had an investment in a renewable energy company founded by Kochhar’s husband.

ICICI Bank’s board initially backed Kochhar, calling the charges “malicious and unfounded”. Last month, the board said an independent probe would examine allegations raised by an anonymous whistleblower.

Published in Dawn, June 20th, 2018