The company began operations in 2001 as a joint venture between Kotak Mahindra Bank and Old Mutual, and has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Kotak Mahindra Bank since 2017. In November 2025, in its 25th year of operations, the insurer crossed ₹1 lakh crore in assets under management, and it covers more than 5 crore lives.
Serving customers at that scale takes a large, distributed workforce. Kotak Life runs a network of 367 branches across 155 cities, and its people are spread across the country—more than 35,000 employees, of whom over 23,000 are part-time.
A Large, Mixed, and Constantly Moving Workforce
Running payroll for a workforce of this size and shape is a very different exercise from paying a head-office team. Full-time and part-time employees sit on the same payroll but rarely share the same pay structures, and every additional pay structure adds another set of calculations that has to be right, every cycle. Spread that workforce across 155 cities, and each state brings its own statutory obligations on top.
Life insurance is also an industry known for high attrition, which means a steady flow of joiners and leavers every month—each one a fresh set of inputs that payroll has to capture accurately and on time. And then there is the question employees ask most often about their pay: tax. At this scale, declarations, reimbursement claims, and income tax queries arrive in volume, and how quickly they are answered shapes how employees feel about payroll as much as the payslip itself.
That is the operation Kotak Life has entrusted to TeamLease HRtech’s managed payroll team since 2009.
TeamLease HRtech’s Approach
Kotak Life’s HRMS, Darwinbox, remains the system its HR teams work in every day. Rather than run payroll as a separate island, TeamLease HRtech integrated its managed payroll solution directly with Darwinbox, so that payroll and HR work from the same employee data.
The service itself runs end to end: a fully automated payroll process with compliance checks built into every run, streamlined tax handling, and real-time support for employees with questions about their pay. On that foundation, the team deployed the modules that add flexibility to payroll and convenience for employees: Flexi Pay, a Reimbursement module covering both CTC and non-CTC claims, and Leave Management.
Every month, the work follows the same documented payroll workflow in four stages: input scrutiny, pre-payroll checks, processing, and post-payroll checks. Specific, repeatable controls run at every stage—duplicate bank account checks, PAN validation, statutory deduction rate mapping, variance reporting—designed to catch a discrepancy before it ever reaches an employee’s payslip, not after.
That discipline is backed by ISO 9001:2015, ISO 27001, and SOC 2 Type II certifications, robust disaster recovery and business continuity infrastructure, and more than 50 years of payroll and employee benefits expertise—the same foundation on which TeamLease HRtech’s managed payroll solution processes over 2.2 lakh payslips every month.
Payroll Processing Results at Kotak Life
The clearest measure of how far the operation has been streamlined is time. Payroll processing for more than 35,000 employees has been reduced to just two to three hours per cycle. And the entire payroll is now managed by a dedicated TeamLease HRtech team of just four people.
Speed and a lean team would count for little if accuracy slipped, and it hasn’t: Kotak Life’s payroll runs at a flawless 100% accuracy rate, with zero payroll errors. That’s a meaningful number at this scale. With more than 35,000 employees on the payroll, even a 99% accuracy rate would mean hundreds of people paid incorrectly every cycle.
Employees have noticed the difference. Timely, accurate pay and faster resolution of income tax queries have brought a noticeable increase in employee satisfaction—no small thing in an industry where keeping people is as hard as hiring them.
More than 15 years into the relationship, the partnership continues to run at this standard, cycle after cycle. For any large insurer paying a big, mixed, and constantly changing workforce, that combination—speed, a lean dedicated team, and accuracy that holds month after month—is what an accountable managed payroll partnership looks like in practice.
At a Glance
- Kotak Life, a wholly owned subsidiary of Kotak Mahindra Bank, began operations in 2001; it has crossed ₹1 lakh crore in AUM, covers more than 5 crore lives, and runs 367 branches across 155 cities.
- Its workforce of more than 35,000 employees includes over 23,000 part-time staff, in an industry known for high attrition.
- That mix of employment types, a constant flow of joiners and leavers, and a high volume of tax queries make payroll accuracy and speed hard to sustain at scale.
- TeamLease HRtech’s managed payroll team has run Kotak Life’s payroll since 2009, integrated directly with its Darwinbox HRMS, with Flexi Pay, CTC and non-CTC Reimbursement, and Leave Management modules deployed.
- Every cycle follows a documented four-stage workflow with stage-wise controls, backed by ISO 9001:2015, ISO 27001, and SOC 2 Type II certifications.
- The result: payroll processed in two to three hours per cycle by a four-person dedicated team, with 100% accuracy, zero errors, and a noticeable rise in employee satisfaction.
