Managing AI Risk in Lending: Lessons and Emerging Practices

Mallika Mittal is a risk management and transformation leader with 28 years of experience in India’s banking and financial services sector. Her expertise spans credit, enterprise, operational and outsourcing risk, product development, and digital transformation.

As Chief Risk Officer at Mahindra Financial Services, she led enterprise-wide risk strategy. She has also held senior leadership roles at HDFC Bank and other leading private-sector banks, overseeing risk functions, credit policy, risk framework design and implementation, portfolio strategy, monitoring models, and regulatory engagement. Mallika currently serves as the Chief Risk Officer at InCred Financial Services.

Mallika holds an Executive MBA from the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, and certifications from London Business School, Wharton, and the Reserve Bank of India.

Indraneel Pandit is the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) at Federal Bank, where he is a primary architect of the institution’s digital transformation. With over 24 years of experience in the banking sector, he has built a career defined by the intersection of high-stakes finance and human-centric technology.

Indraneel’s professional journey spans premier multinational and Indian private sector banks. Before joining Federal Bank, he held strategic leadership roles at Standard Chartered Bank, DBS Bank and Yes Bank across corporate banking and structured finance.

At Federal Bank, he has been instrumental in scaling multi-billion-dollar business portfolios and driving projects to modernize the bank’s franchise and position it as a future-ready, national powerhouse. He is a vocal advocate of the Bank’s philosophy “Digital at the Fore, Human at the core”.

Indraneel holds a Bachelor of Engineering from Mumbai University, an MBA in Finance from JBIMS and is a certified FRM.

Karthik is a Partner in EY India’s Financial Services Risk Management (FSRM) practice, focused on Model Risk Management and AI Risk Management. He advises financial institutions on deploying AI at scale through governance, testing, validation, and lifecycle controls that meet regulatory expectations.

He works on AI governance, testing strategies for non-deterministic and agentic systems, expert judgment model validation, and the integration of AI controls into risk governance frameworks. He also designs operating models, documentation, and workflows that convert regulatory requirements into practical, audit-ready practices.

His recent work increasingly focuses on bridging classical model risk frameworks with emerging AI risk, covering inventory, explainability, qualitative risk, testing methodologies, and accountability for AI driven decisions.

Prior to EY, he led Model Risk Management in India and AI Model Risk globally at Deutsche Bank, while also supporting major regulatory remediation programs.

Karthik holds an MBA from Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University.

Shailesh is a senior risk management professional with 20 years of experience in credit risk and technology. In his current role at BNP Paribas, he is responsible for major credit decisions, credit risk assessment and governance matters.

Shailesh is dedicated to building a strong risk culture. He champions cross-functional collaboration and drives professional networking through credit risk forums in Mumbai. He also serves as the co-director at the GARP Mumbai Chapter.

He holds a Master of Management Studies (Finance) and a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science. He is a certified FRM and holds the SCR and RAI certificates.