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. Rakesh P. Singh, who is currently the Professor of Rural Management & Business Economics and Director of Center for Rural Management at Great Lakes Institute, assumes the Faculty Chair for Union Bank Great Lakes Center for Banking Excellence.

Dr. Singh is a Gold Medalist in MA Economics (University of Mumbai) and has a PhD in Supply Chain Management. He has over 20 years of experience in academics as a teacher, trainer and consultant. He is the founding member of Institute of Supply Chain management, Mumbai and Dean (Academics) at Mumbai Business School.

Dr. Singh has worked with reputed organizations like IGIDR, The Economist, NMIMS, SPJIMR and SPJCM Singapore. He specializes in Economics, Forecasting and Supply Chain Management. He is widely published both in popular media and in academic journals internationally. He has been speaker at various events organized by CII, FICCI, CSCP, ASSOCHAM and MARCUS EVANS. He is involved with a number of organizations as trainer and consultant. Some of his clients are L&T, Syngenta, Vodafone, Nivea, Bank of Baroda, Rallis, Sundararm Clayton, John-Deer Tractors, Sical Logistics. Dr. Singh is on various committees of the Uttar Pradesh Planning Commission and has served as member of Agricultural Terminal Markets Committee, under the Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India. He is also associated with Singapore Economic Development Board as an Economist.

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