Top 10 private banks cut over 10k jobs in FY26
Benchmarks Nifty24,154.90-132.75FEATURED FUNDS★★★★★Motilal Oswal Midcap Fund Direct-Growth5Y Return23.3 % Invest NowEnter search text:HomeETPrimeMarketsMarket DataNewsIndustrySMEPoliticsWealthMFTechAICareersOpinionNRIPanacheThe Economic Times daily newspaper is available online now. Read Today's Paper Top 10 private banks cut over 10,000 jobs in FY26 as AI reshapes hiringSECTIONSTop 10 private banks cut over 10,000 jobs in FY26 as AI reshapes hiringBy Saloni Shukla, ET…
Top 10 private banks cut over 10,000 jobs in FY26 as AI reshapes hiring
India’s top private banks are reducing their employee numbers significantly. This workforce contraction occurred after substantial hiring in the previous fiscal year. Technology-led efficiencies are enabling banks to expand operations without increasing staff. Some midsize lenders, however, have increased their headcount during this period. Banks are accelerating AI and automation deployment across their operations.
It fell by 9,637 in the preceding year, according to data compiled by ET from their annual reports. This marks a sharp reversal from FY24, when they collectively added 83,645 employees.
The combined workforce of these banks consequently fell 2.6% to 739,452 as of March 31 from a peak of 759,203 two years earlier.
The analysis covered HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, IndusInd Bank, Yes Bank, Federal Bank, IDFC First Bank, Bandhan Bank and RBL Bank.
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HDFC Bank, the country’s largest private-sector lender, is shifting employees from back-end operations to customer-facing roles as technology-led efficiencies free up capacity, managing director and chief executive Sashidhar Jagdishan said in the lender’s annual report.
“Our focus is on enabling our people to work more productively, and with greater alignment to our customer needs, leveraging technology,” Jagdishan wrote in his letter to shareholders. “We are consciously redeploying talent from backend functions, where we are able to bring technology-led efficiencies, to customer-facing roles.”
The workforce contraction was led by the four largest private-sector lenders, which together reduced their headcount by 14,364 in FY26. ICICI Bank recorded the steepest decline of 6,633 employees, followed by HDFC Bank with 3,346, Axis Bank with 3,116 and Kotak Mahindra Bank with 1,269.
ADDITIONS AT MIDESIZE BANKS
These reductions were partly offset by additions at some midsize lenders. Federal Bank (1,570 employees), IndusInd Bank (1,491), Yes Bank (904), IDFC First Bank (869) and Bandhan Bank (365) increased their headcount. RBL Bank reduced its workforce by 949.
“The trend of headcount optimisation continues because the investments that we have made in technology over the years are starting to deliver productivity gains,” Axis Bank executive director Subrat Mohanty said on a recent analyst call. “The benefits of AI are yet to fully show up in headcount reduction. A lot of AI support currently is in terms of improving processing speed. The headcount benefit will become visible over the next year.”
Gross recruitment also slowed substantially at some large banks. HDFC Bank hired 45,902 employees in FY26, nearly half the 89,115 it recruited in FY24. Kotak Mahindra Bank’s hiring of permanent employees declined to about 18,927 from 31,686 in FY23.
The slowdown in gross numbers has come despite attrition remaining elevated, suggesting that banks are becoming more selective about replacing employees who leave. Attrition during FY26 was 23.1% at HDFC Bank, 15.6% at ICICI Bank, 22.4% at Axis Bank and 32.5% at Kotak Mahindra Bank.
TOP 4 BANKS EXPAND OPS
The decline in manpower has not been accompanied by a retreat in physical distribution. The top four lenders expanded their combined branch and business-centre network by about 1,289 locations in FY26, indicating that the traditional relationship between branch expansion and recruitment is weakening.
Banks have simultaneously accelerated their deployment of AI and automation. Axis Bank’s AI-powered employee assistant supports more than 84,000 employees, resolves over 81% of branch queries and has delivered productivity improvements of more than 10% in selected customer journeys, according to its FY26 annual report.
ICICI Bank has deployed more than 100 autonomous bots, while Federal Bank has automated over 385 processes. IDFC First Bank said its voice bots delivered productivity about 1.5 times that of human-assisted outbound operations, while more than 90% of disbursals in selected products were automated.
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