mumbai premier infra finance company idfc which on wednesday received an inprinciple approval to set up a bank will shift assets into an nbfc infra fund as part of the process to convert into a bank it will also operationalize its plans on several fronts as it races against time to meet an 18month deadline to open its bank branch doors at one end the plans include initiating legal process for transfer of group companies under a nonoperating holding company on the operational side the company will start hiring bankers installing it systems and identifying branches speaking to toi idfc md ceo vikram limaye said that the bank had obtained the boards approval prior to approaching the rbi and would now start the conversion process we have to work on how we operationalize the bank and have 18 months to do that there is a lot of work to be done in terms of structure people and technology branches have to be set up but this has not come as a surprise as we have been thinking this through for several months and now we have to execute our plans limaye said part of the restructuring involves creating an nbfc infrastructure fund into which the finance companies would transfer assets to reduce pressure on the bank this is necessary as the company would have to meet all the cash reserve ratio and statutory liquidity ratio requirements on its liabilities there is no dispensation and that was quite clear in the rbis guidelines we will have to comply with all the requirements on cash reserve ratio and statutory liquidity ratio said limaye it would also have its private equity investment banking and asset management business under a common nonoperating holding company one of the preconditions for the licence is that idfc transfer all businesses that can be undertaken from within a bank to the bank at present idfc has 21 domestic subsidiaries and five international arms the domestic arms include investment banking primary dealership and pension management idfc has to work on several fronts at the same time as the 18month deadline would have to take into account time taken by the courts to grant approval for mergers the bank has already started the hiring process by identifying managers now with the approval in place appointment letters will be issued we have been hiring selectively but we have met a lot of people who we would like to join us till a few days ago it was not clear whether the election commission would clear the process or whether the licences would be given our preelection or postelections so now that we have visibility we can close on some of the hiring that we have not done as yet said limaye recently idfc had hired avtar monga senior executive with bank of america who comes with a strong background in operations and technology it had earlier hired ajay mahajan who used to be with yes bank and ubs there are