Shri Ganesh Kumar Sundara Iyer, Independent Director

Shri Ganesh Kumar Sundara Iyer is the former Executive Director of the Reserve Bank of India, with over three decades of experience in central banking, payment and settlement systems, information technology, cyber security and financial market structure. He has played a key role in the digitisation of tax receipts for the Central Board of Direct Taxes and in the GST implementation for the Government of India.
He is a post graduate in Management having experience in varied fields such as marketing, market research, banking, finance, law, and Information Technology. He has been with the Reserve Bank of India for more than three decades; was associated with the introduction of technology in the Banking sector as well as the introduction of new digital based payment and settlement systems.
He pioneered the introduction of electronic movement of funds, in ideations, design and development of innovative technology based payment systems for India; in the introduction of Real Time Gross Settlement, Cheque Truncation and other electronic retail payment systems such as the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT), digital wallets (called PPIs), as also electronic data interfaces across banks, regulators, and other entities including the Government.
He played a key role in framing the policy for IT implementation in the Reserve Bank of India and the Banking sector, apart from providing policy perspectives relating to IS Security, Audit and Compliance and was associated with the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology - the IT institute for the Banking sector, facilitating in training and new service offerings stemming out of Research activities of the Institute.
He was instrumental in setting up of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) as an umbrella organisation for retail payment systems, and the Indian Financial Technology and Allied Services (IFTAS). And facilitated the setting up of the Reserve Bank Information Technology Limited, as a ’first-of-its-kind’ IT subsidiary for a central bank, assisting the central bank in cyber security related matters in a focused manner, provide cyber security assistance and advice and assess cyber security levels of regulated entities both through on-site and off-site means setting up the Reserve Bank Information Technology Private Limited (ReBIT), a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank which focuses of IT research, training, standards formulation and research in allied areas.
He was the Co-Chair of the Financial Innovation Network (FIN) under the Financial Stability Board of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), Basel, Switzerland and was also the Chairman of the Indian Financial Technology and Allied Services (IFTAS), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of India and had been a nominee director in a large public sector bank and also part of a few of its Board level Committees for about five years.
He was also associated with the National Cyber Security Council of the Government of India and in the framing of the Information Technology Act as also the Payment and Settlement Systems Act of the country. In the area of Cyber and Information Security, he assisted in the development of frameworks for addressing Information and Cyber security for banks and other financial entities and supported the initiatives of the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) for the banking sector. Currently, he is on the Board of IDFC First Bank and CDSL.