By Lopa Patel (9 June 2009)

It takes courage to agree to be interviewed on the day your company announces the closure of all outlets of a well-known building society with a loss of 1600 jobs, but Mrs Kamel Hothi is no ordinary interviewee. Quietly she informs me that she too had to be reassessed for their own job, filling out a lengthy questionnaire about skills and expertise at a day's notice, despite having worked more than 30 years for the same company. Starting out as a cashier in the Slough branch at the age of just sixteen, Hothi has risen to the role of Asian Markets Director, Corporate Markets for the Lloyds TSB group. With quiet fortitude, steely determination and unexpected warmth, Kamel Hothi is indeed, an Asian Banker Extraordinaire.

Arriving in the UK at the age of six from the Punjab, India, Hothi could so easily have been stifled by a strict, traditional upbringing that saw her being denied the right to higher education - Punjabi girls didn't live away from home back then. The prospects open to her after leaving school at the age of sixteen, armed with only O Levels, were a factory job or an early marriage. She saw a job advert for a cashier at the Lloyds Slough branch, and encouraged by an elder brother, applied thinking that she would spend the day counting money. Instead, she found herself customer-facing, dealing with the largely ethnic clientele and quickly discovered her skills in nurturing business relationships.

She spent the next nine years acquiring the "life experience" she says is so vital to career progression today: studying for banking exams via correspondence courses in the evenings. An arranged marriage at the age of nineteen could have derailed her career prospects, but instead Hothi used her skills of persuasion on her newly acquired family to convince them that she should be allowed to work. Hothi admits that having an open-minded partner like her property-developer husband helped significantly and today, they can both take pride in the great strides she has made in a male-dominated workplace.

She rose to become the first Asian Branch Manager of the Walton-On-Thames (Surrey) branch, where a largely white, middle class customer base saw her attain new customer service skills and gain confidence. Within a few years she had risen to an area management role, overseeing 160 branches, before joining group operations when TSB merged with Lloyds.

Asian Jewel Awards

Hothi brought a fresh perspective to Lloyds' Group operations: opening up higher management to the highly profitable Asian business customer base, championing the bank's involvement with the Asian Jewel Awards that allows it to get closer to the Asian SME customer base and latterly improving diversity within its Lloyd's own operations.

As well as the Jewel Awards, Lloyds runs workshops for between 25 - 45 people up and down the country, it hosts larger themed gatherings of 150-200 entrepreneurs, it sponsors the Asian Women of Achievement Awards in recognition of the increasing numbers of Asian women business owners and it was one of the first to announce its sponsorship of the London Olympic games.

Hothi, the architect of many of these initiatives, also cites the bank's success in launching specific products like Islamic (Shariah-compliant) mortgages, Islamic business banking and a tie-up with ICICI bank that allows the group to offer free funds transfer between the UK and India for its customers.

As Asian Markets Director, Hothi has mapped out the bank's strategy towards the Asian market in Britain.

Hothi is philosophical about her claustrophobic home environment, brushing off probing by highlighting her involvement in Lloyds' internal Ethnic Minority Network, her involvement in chairing the Government's procurement working group for the National Employment Panel - a body set up to advise on how government can use racial equality to help small ethnic businesses grow and her participation as committee member of the Asian Guild. When she is not handing out awards, she is usually receiving them.

Her stamina in the face of a difficult, hard to please community has given her a very pragmatic approach to business. She claims to be relatively unaffected by the recession and prevailing political climate highlighting instead the "relationship building and prudent lending philosophies" that the bank is following and its demonstrable commitment to the Asian market. "Asian owned businesses, built by 1st and 2nd generations Asians, have survived many hardships. Most immigrants came here with very little money so for these businesses, the current recession is just another challenge" she explains. "We are seeing many Asians businesses come to us seeking new opportunities, the chance to grow and diversify. Prudence has meant that many of these businesses are not highly leveraged of hedged, so they often see great opportunity in calamity".

Hothi says that she has faced few calamities, or set backs, but that her own early timidity held her back from achieving her ambitions sooner. She loves her traditional upbringing and armed with the Asian sense of value, morals and the community support, it is easy to see that she could easily reach heady heights in the corporate world. For now, though, Hothi sees a future ahead with the Lloyds Banking Group professionally while personally she takes pride in seeing her two boys, now aged 22 and 18, graduate and start professional careers of their own.

Equally comfortable in a sari or a suit; ably bridging Eastern traditionalism with a progressive Western attitude, whilst holding down a demanding job, giving back through volunteering and charitable work, Hothi is an Asian 'jewel' in her own right.

More about Kamel Hothi

Click here to read Kamel Hothi's profile
Click here to read about the Asian Women of Achievement Awards 2009
Click here for pictures from the AWA Awards 2009
Click here to read about Aisha Caan's Exhibition 2008
Click here to read about the Asian Jewel Awards 2007
Click here to read about Kamel Hothi's Sikh Community Award 2007