Mint BFSI Awards 2023: A stellar jury picks the finest

In the 16th iteration of the Mint Annual Banking Conclave, dubbed this year as the Mint BFSI Summit and Awards, 14 trophies are set to be handed out on 11 January. The winners will be decided by a jury of esteemed professionals from the financial sector. The five mild jury includes R. Doraiswamy from Life Insurance Corporation, Cyril Shroff from Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, HDFC Bank's Keki Mistry, Amish Mehta from Ltd, and Nithya Easwaran from Multiples Alternate Asset Management Pvt. Ltd. The event was supported by howindialives.com and Fisdom.

In mid-December, the jury met to assess rankings based on publicly available data and used their expertise to consider market trends and qualitative elements before finalizing the winners. This thorough examination, which took almost two hours, also involved the jury ensuring no conflict of interest was present, leading to some recusals. The top-ranking entries were not automatically chosen as winners if the jury believed other contenders had superior qualitative elements.

The award categories include large, mid, and small-sized banks, non-banking financial companies, and insurers, as well as standalone health insurer. There are also categories for actively managed equity and fixed income mutual funds. However, the jury decided to skip three categories due to inadequate information.

Easwaran praised the jury's thorough evaluation process, highlighting the mix of data interpretation and subjectivity. The awards aim to acknowledge the pivotal role of the financial service industry in India's goal to achieve a GDP of $5 trillion. Mehta stated that BFSI will be a significant part of this growth with its role in infrastructure development and investments in equity and debt.

Doraiswamy emphasized BFSI's crucial role in economic development in the past several years and Jury members also felt these awards would encourage BFSI players. Mistry said that awarding good performers encourages them to provide better services. Shroff concurred, stating that the awards would give a boost to the sector's players while also confidently asserting that the $5 trillion target is realistic.