Behind the discount in workforce in India’s prime three non-public sector banks
India’s banks have been scaling up investments behind new applied sciences, digital infrastructure and now even synthetic intelligence (AI) is starting to make inroads as they give the impression of being to streamline processes, improve buyer outreach and strengthen cyber safety.
Enhancing productiveness aided by new know-how, coupled with the traditional attrition could also be starting to have some bearing on headcounts at main lenders.
ICICI Financial institution’s everlasting workforce lowered by 5,148 staff within the monetary yr 2026. The nation’s second largest non-public sector lender had 1,24,029 everlasting staff, in as on March 31, 2026, in keeping with its annual report. As on March 31, 2025, the everlasting worker depend had stood at 1,29,177.
ICICI Financial institution’s whole variety of staff have additionally come down by round 6,633 to 1,24,324 in FY26, from 1,30,957 staff a yr earlier, the annual report exhibits. The lender didn’t specify the explanations behind this decline. However, it mentions that the worker base consists of gross sales executives, staff on fixed-term contracts and interns.
ICICI Financial institution just isn’t alone. At its bigger rival HDFC Financial institution, the workforce lowered by 3,343 staff to 2,11,178 staff on the finish of FY26, in contrast with 2,14,521 staff a yr earlier. Its non-supervisory employees energy declined by over 8,000 staff to 1,62,797 from 1,70,950. Then again, its workforce elevated throughout junior, center and senior administration ranges.
Axis Financial institution, the third largest non-public sector lender reported whole worker depend of over 1.01 lakh within the monetary yr ended March 2026 in its annual report, in contrast with 1,04,453 within the earlier yr ended March 2025.
New know-how alone will not be the explanation behind the decline in jobs at banks. The conventional attrition that occurs yearly may additionally be at play right here. Bankers say that as productiveness will increase with new know-how, a few of the positions will not be essentially crammed again.
“Now we have an attrition of about 18-20%. As we get extra productive and environment friendly, we simply don’t backfill the attrition. So, there isn’t a layoff occurring right here,” Subrat Mohanty, government director of Axis Financial institution, advised reporters within the post-quarterly earnings name on Saturday, July 18.
What was being seen presently was the continued funding that the financial institution has made in know-how when it comes to productiveness enhancements coming by largely and probably not AI, he mentioned.
HDFC Financial institution officers identified that the lender had an attrition price of round 20%, and generally there may be somewhat extra time which may be wanted to fill sure positions, so it could simply be a short lived timing distinction. Additionally, generally if the attrition price is excessive, the financial institution might take a name on whether or not there was a necessity for these positions at decrease ranges.
“We will probably be guaranteeing that we don’t ask anybody to go, and that’s one thing that I proceed to state, and each management member continues to state, apart from non-performance,” Sasjidhar Jagdishan, the MD and CEO of HDFC Financial institution, mentioned within the financial institution’s first quarter earnings name.
HDFC Financial institution had mentioned in its annual report that the main target was on enabling its folks to work extra productively, and with better alignment to buyer wants, leveraging know-how. The lender can also be redeploying expertise from backend capabilities, the place it is ready to carry technology-led efficiencies, to customer-facing roles.
A rising share of funds, onboarding, servicing, and lending is digitally enabled and supported by analytics and automation, in keeping with HDFC Financial institution. Rising applied sciences, together with AI-led instruments, have the potential to additional improve service high quality, effectivity and turnaround instances, it mentioned.
“What we’re endeavouring is how can we use and leverage know-how and retrain a few of these folks on the back-end to maneuver to the front-end, or to know-how groups, goes to be the medium- to long-term technique,” Jagdishan mentioned on the decision.
AI and GenAI guarantees transformational capabilities, in keeping with a report by the Boston Consulting Group in 2025.
“With mature deployment, 35-40 per cent of present low-value actions will be automated. To seize this potential, banks should transfer past pilots. This implies having a transparent AI/ GenAI technique, investing in modular structure, organising governance frameworks for moral AI, and reskilling employees,” BCG mentioned within the report.
