The appointments committee of the Union Cabinet cleared the name of T. Rabi Sankar for the post of deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Sankar, who is currently the executive director in charge of payments and settlement, has been appointed as Deputy Governor for a period of three years.

The deputy governor’s position was lying vacant after B.P. Kanungo retired on 2 April. The other three deputy governors are Mahesh Kumar Jain, Michael Patra, and M. Rajeshwar Rao. Besides payments, Sankar is also in charge of fintech, department of information technology, RTI (right to information) and risk monitoring.

Sankar, has long experience across a wide spectrum of central banking functions, particularly, exchange rate management, reserves portfolio management, public debt management, monetary operations, development, regulation and surveillance of financial markets and of payment systems, and managing the Bank’s IT infrastructure.

He is a member of important committees that include Internal Study Group to Review the Working of the Marginal Cost of Funds Based Lending Rate System, Working Group to Review the Guidelines for Hedging of Commodity Price Risk by Residents in the Overseas Markets, Expert Committee on Integration of Commodity Spot and Derivative Markets (established by the Government of India), Working Group on Establishing Viable Capital Markets (established by the Bank for International Settlements or, BIS) and Working Group on Dollar Funding Markets (BIS). 

He has been a member of RBI committees including those for forming marginal cost of funds based lending system, hedging of commodity price risk, integration of commodity spot and derivatives markets. He was also part of two important working groups of the Bank for International Settlement (BIS) on capital markets and dollar funding markets. Sankar holds an M Phil in Economics degree.