Who Is Pam Kaur? HSBC's First Female CFO In 160 Years

HSBC Holdings has appointed Indian-origin financier Pam Kaur as its new Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Succeeding Georges Elhedery, she is the first woman to hold this position in the bank's 160-year history. The company said in a press release that Kaur, 60, will also serve as the Executive Director of the Board of Directors, effective January 1, 2025.

Pam Kaur's Career Milestones

United Kingdom-based Pam Kaur holds an MBA in Finance and a B.Com (Honours) from Panjab University in Chandigarh. qualified as a chartered accountant at Ernst and Young (EY) and started her career at Citibank in internal audit. She has a distinguished career in banking, spanning over four decades.

Kaur has held important positions at numerous international financial institutions including Global Head of Group Audit for Deutsche, CFO and COO of the Restructuring and Risk Division at Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, and Group Head of Compliance and Anti-Money Laundering at Lloyds TSB.

Kaur has also served as Chief Compliance Officer at Citigroup International and Global Director of Compliance for Citigroup's Global Consumer Group. She currently acts as a non-executive Director of Abrdn PLC. She is a Fellow Member of The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

Kaur joined HSBC in April 2013 from Deutsche Bank as Group Head of Internal Audit. She became the Group Chief Risk Officer at HSBC in January 2020, taking on the responsibility for Compliance in June 2021. As the CFO, she will earn an annual base salary of £803,000 (₹8.3 crore), a press release noted.

Kaur is also entitled to a fixed pay allowance of £1,085,000 (₹8.7 crore) and a pension allowance of £80,300 (₹64 lakh). She will also get a discretionary variable pay, including an annual incentive award of up to 215 per cent of her base salary and a long-term incentive award of up to 320 per cent of her base salary.

In her LinkedIn profile, Pam Kaur describes herself as a “passionate supporter of diversity and inclusion” and a global sponsor of HSBC’s 'Embrace' employee network which aims to help attract, retain, and engage a more diverse ethnic and multicultural workforce among the lender’s 225,000 staff worldwide.