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 expertise, coupled with the conventional attrition could also be starting to have some bearing on headcounts at main lenders.
ICICI Financial institution’s everlasting workforce diminished by 5,148 workers within the monetary yr 2026. The nation’s second largest personal sector lender had 1,24,029 everlasting workers, 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 workers have additionally come down by round 6,633 to 1,24,324 in FY26, from 1,30,957 workers a yr earlier, the annual report exhibits. The lender didn’t specify the explanations behind this decline. However, it mentions that the worker base contains gross sales executives, workers on fixed-term contracts and interns.
ICICI Financial institution isn’t alone. At its bigger rival HDFC Financial institution, the workforce diminished by 3,343 workers to 2,11,178 workers on the finish of FY26, in contrast with 2,14,521 workers a yr earlier. Its non-supervisory workers power declined by over 8,000 workers to 1,62,797 from 1,70,950. Alternatively, its workforce elevated throughout junior, center and senior administration ranges.
Axis Financial institution, the third largest personal 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 expertise alone is probably not 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 expertise, among the positions is probably not essentially stuffed again.
“We’ve got an attrition of about 18-20%. As we get extra productive and environment friendly, we simply don’t backfill the attrition. So, there is no such thing as a layoff taking place right here,” Subrat Mohanty, govt director of Axis Financial institution, advised reporters within the post-quarterly earnings name on Saturday, July 18.
What was being seen at the moment was the continued funding that the financial institution has made in expertise when it comes to productiveness enhancements coming by means of largely and not likely AI, he mentioned.
HDFC Financial institution officers identified that the lender had an attrition fee of round 20%, and generally there may be somewhat extra time that could be wanted to fill sure positions, so it could simply be a brief timing distinction. Additionally, generally if the attrition fee is excessive, the financial institution could take a name on whether or not there was a necessity for these positions at decrease ranges.
“We will likely be making certain 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 focus was on enabling its folks to work extra productively, and with better alignment to buyer wants, leveraging expertise. The lender can also be redeploying expertise from backend capabilities, the place it is ready to convey 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 will we use and leverage expertise and retrain a few of these folks on the back-end to maneuver to the front-end, or to expertise 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 may 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 workers,” BCG mentioned within the report.
