Shyamala Gopinath

Shyamala Gopinath (born 20 June 1949) is Chairperson of HDFC Bank, India's largest lender by market capitalization. Gopinath is a former deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), a position she served for seven years. She was actively involved in managing India's balance of payments crisis in 1991 that led to the first round of economic liberalization. Making the returns of small saving schemes market-linked was one of most significant recommendations made by the Shyamala Gopinath panel, constituted on July 8, 2010. Finally, the Government of India in February 2016 notified that instead of annual resetting of interest rates for the next financial year, the interest rates from now on will be reset every quarter based on the G-Sec yields of the previous quarter. She had earlier assisted the second Narasimhan committee on banking sector reforms.

A Certified Associate of the Indian Institute of Banking and Finance (1974), she has completed master's degree in commerce from University of Mysore (1980).

During her school days, Gopinath wanted to study Mathematics and become a Teacher. However, her ambitions changed after selecting Commerce stream. Incidentally, she had opted Commerce as a subject to avoid studying History. She was among the few women students to post-graduate in Commerce from University of Mysore in 1970. After her post-graduate degree, she had decided on a career in Commercial Banking and joined Bank of Baroda but at her father's insistence, she appeared for RBI competitive examination and even topped it.

Gopinath joined the RBI as an officer in April 1972. During 1972-1996, she rose through the ranks to become Chief General Manager in 1996, a position she held until 2001. Starting June 2001, she was on deputation as Senior Financial Expert at IMF where she worked in the then Monetary Affairs and Exchange Department - Financial Institutions Division. She was responsible for the Accompanying Document to the Guidelines on Foreign exchange reserve management detailing country practices. During July 2003 to September 2004, as Executive Director of RBI, she was responsible for the Bank Regulation and Supervision department till February 2004, among others. She was elevated to the position of Deputy Governor in September 2004. During her tenure, she was involved in reforms in forex regulations and market development. She served in this position until June 2011 during which she handled various areas ranging from financial stability, debt management, and foreign exchange reserves management, to management of capital account, financial market regulation, supervision of non-banking finance companies, payments and settlements systems, RBI accounts and the RBI balance sheet.

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