Most Powerful Women in Banking: Ranjana Clark, MUFG

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Head of Global Transaction Banking

Ranjana Clark is leading the first line of business at MUFG to move to a global business model, spanning the Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Clark expanded her responsibilities last year to lead global transaction banking for the Japanese banking giant, while keeping her other two jobs: head of transaction banking for the Americas and Bay Area president for its U.S. banking unit, Union Bank.

Since then, she has been on a listening and learning tour as part of an effort to create a business strategy for serving corporate customers worldwide. As part of that strategy, Clark is instituting global cross-functional teams to bring new products to market and standardize processes. She’s also investing in digitizing products in ways that ease customer pain points.

In January, Clark’s unit launched receipt of real-time payments for corporate, commercial and retail customers, and since then it has reported increased volumes week over week. And after the COVID-19 crisis disrupted the workflows of corporate customers, MUFG started offering check printing for those with limited on-site resources, live chat and chatbot functionality, faster onboarding, digital signatures and faster account openings.

“We focused on products that would help clients during this extraordinary time and address contingency planning and fraud prevention,” Clark said. “Prior to COVID-19, we were already realizing the benefits of global investments in our people and processes. However, this unprecedented time gave us the opportunity to iterate our approach.

With so much global travel suspended, Clark adopted video communication to “sit down” with colleagues at all levels across the world. This year she held the company’s first Global Transaction Banking all-hands meeting, which included employees in 23 countries.

For the first time, American Banker's Most Powerful Women in Banking celebration is open to the whole financial community. Join us virtually October 6-8 to hear our 2020 honorees' stories and experiences. Register here.

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