MUMBAI: As it readies to convert itself into a full-fledged bank, IDFC has said it will be hiring around 1,500 professionals in the run-up to the launch.

"At present we are 600 at the group level and are looking at hiring 1500 more before launching our banking operations," the infra lender's group chief financial officer Sunil Kakar said over the weekend.

He said a bulk of the hiring will happen in the next fiscal, as the company approaches the October 1 deadline it has set for itself to launch the bank.

Managing director and chief executive Vikram Limaye said the senior management team, which includes a majority of the department heads, has already been hired and the company will be recruiting the remaining talent in a structured manner so as to not affect its costs.

Justifying the massive hiring, he claimed that the company's cost-to-income ratio at around 16 per cent is very low.

IDFC was selected along with micro-lender Bandhan to start a bank with universal offerings by the RBI in April in the first round of bank licensing that came in after 2002-03.

The in-principle nod, given in April, is valid for 18 months. There have been doubts about the new players poaching talent from the existing lenders. However, all the existing lenders, especially those from the private space, have dismissed such concerns till now.