GXS Bank announced that its group CEO Muthukrishnan "Ramu" Ramaswami will retire from the Bank on 31 May 2025. He will continue to serve as a senior advisor to the GXS Group.

GXS Bank board of directors have appointed Pei-Si Lai, CEO of GXBank, the Malaysia subsidiary of GXS Bank, to succeed Ramaswami. Lai will step down as CEO of GXBank and take up the role of GXS Bank Group CEO. Current GXBank deputy CEO Kaushik Chowdhury will succeed as CEO of GXBank. All appointments will take effect from 1 June 2025.

Ramaswami joined GXS Bank in February 2023 and has been instrumental in building a strong foundation to support its ambition to become Southeast Asia’s digital bank. In addition to GXS Bank in Singapore and GXBank in Malaysia, the group also works closely with Superbank, a digital bank in Indonesia that shares the same shareholders in Grab and Singtel.

As group CEO of GXS Bank, Ramaswami oversaw the completion of its regional technology, data and product builds. These have been critical in enabling the three digital banks to launch and scale in a span of three years.

Incoming GXS Bank group CEO Lai has been the CEO of GXBank since it received one of the five digital bank licences in Malaysia in 2022. During her tenure, GXBank became the first digital bank to launch in Malaysia. Lai also oversaw the successful launch of GXBank in November 2023, and in two weeks, welcomed its first 100,000 customers. Within a year, the bank grew to more than a million customers who completed over 124 million transactions, encompassing card transactions, interbank and intrabank transfers. GXBank also received various industry recognitions including Best Malaysian Digital Bank, Best Enterprise Governance, Risk and Compliance Implementation and Best Gen-AI Retail Product Initiative.

Together with Ramaswami, Lai most recently oversaw the acquisition of Validus Capital by GXS Bank. This is the first merger and acquisition deal by a digital bank in Singapore.

Hsieh Fu Hua, chairman of the GXS Bank board said, “We are much indebted to Ramu for helping us build regional capabilities and infrastructure on which our group of digital banks can rapidly scale to serve customers in the region. We are also much appreciative that he leaves us with a strong leadership bench that will take our group forward confidently.

“We are delighted to appoint Pei-Si to succeed Ramu as group CEO. As a veteran banker with the unique experience of having launched Malaysia’s first digital bank, Pei-Si understands the tremendous impact that digital banks can bring to our communities. She has our unreserved support to fulfil our ambition of becoming the digital bank of Southeast Asia.”

Re-disseminated by The Asian Banker