Ajay Mahajan is an experienced banker and financial services professional with over three decades with the financial sector in India. Ajay worked last as the MD & CEO of CARE Ratings Limited. He joined CARE Ratings in 2020 to drive a deep transformation at the company focusing on growth in both the ratings & non-ratings business as well as on re-engineering business processes with a deep penetration of technology including Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
Ajay started his career with Bank of America in 1990, went on to become the Head of Financial Markets in 1999. Under his leadership the bank also built a 100% NBFC in the country to do primary dealership and credit fixed income businesses.
In 2004, Ajay joined YES BANK as a founding member of the top management team and built this greenfield bank from scratch in three critical business areas – Financial Markets, Financial Institutions Group & International Banking and Retail Product Management including tying up with leading insurance players and various wealth management platforms.
In 2008, Ajay was chosen to lead UBS’s foray into Indian banking. This was his second greenfield establishment of a new bank licence in the country. Ajay built the business from scratch to a reasonably profitable one with strong presence in corporate lending, financial markets and credit investments.
Prior to joining CARE, Ajay was with IDFC First Bank where he led a massive transformation of an Infrastructure sector focused NBFC into a universal bank with direct responsibility of building the wholesale bank across – SME to large corporate lending in working capital, term loans, Treasury, Transaction Banking & Government Banking. Besides, he led the challenging task of managing the legacy stressed assets book. Ajay spent 7 years at IDFC Bank, building teams, systems, processes and cutting-edge technologies to support the wholesale bank’s growth.
Ajay has a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical & Electronics Engineering from BITS Pilani, an MBA from FMS, Delhi (where he was a gold medalist) and CFA Charter from CFA Institute, USA.