Union Bank Great Lakes Centre for Banking Excellence and a Faculty Chair as part of this Centre were created at Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai. Union Bank of India would create a corpus to support the activities and initiatives of the newly created Centre of Excellence.

The Center would be headed by an eminent and distinguished full-time Professor, who will occupy the Chair created, and will lead the Research and Learning programme initiatives in the Banking, Financial Services & Insurance Industries. In addition to the Chair Professor & the team, the Center will have a panel of eminent industry leaders from the likes of Mr. Y.V. Reddy (Governor, Reserve bank of India), Mr. Vagul (ex CMD ICICI), Dr. S Narayanan IAS (former Economic Advisor, PMO), Mr. Deepak Parekh (Chairman HDFC & IDFC), Dr. Omkar Goswamy (founder, CERG), Dr. Shyam Sunder (Yale University), Dr. Raghuram Rajan (University of Chicago) etc., in the form of an Advisory Council, which will don the guiding, coaching and mentoring roles in the endeavors of the Center.

Dr Shanthi, passionate about Rural India and much of his research and writing are focused in this area.

“Dr Shanthi, Chair Professor - Union Bank Center for Banking Excellence, holds a Ph.D in Economics from the Institute for Financial Management and Research (Univ. of Madras affiliation), Chennai and an M.A in Economics from the University of Madras.

Dr Shanthi’s Teaching and research interests are in Microeconomics (Theory and Applications); Macroeconomics (Theory and Applications); Local Body Public Finance (Applied) and Banking (Applications).

With more than 20 years of teaching / research experience in the areas of micro, macro and managerial economics (most of it at The Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR), Chennai) and more than a decade of consulting experience including corporate training and development, Dr Shanthi has also consulted extensively with the Government of Tamilnadu and has worked on projects funded by Steel Ministry on 'Forecasting Steel Demand' and on a project on 'Price Controls in India' jointly funded by ICSSR, RBI and the Finance Ministry (Delhi) while at the Indian Statistical Institute (New Delhi). She has also consulted for the private sector including some major corporates and the Confederation of Indian Industry, Southern Region.

Dr Shanthi has written and published over twenty five research reports and papers and newspaper articles in the broad areas of public finance and applied Finance and Economics.