Axis Bank plans 12,500 campus hires, redeploys staff amid AI push

The bank plans to hire around 12,000-12,500 people from campuses in FY27, compared with 11,500-11,600 in FY26

Axis Bank, India’s third-largest private-sector lender, plans to step up campus hiring to around 12,500 in 2026-27 from 11,500-11,600 in 2025-26 (FY26), even as artificial intelligence (AI) adoption and workforce reorientation reduce the need for some transaction processing roles, according to Rajkamal Vempati, group head of human resources at Axis Bank. 

The overall employee base fell by 3,116 to 101,337 in FY26 from 104,453 a year earlier, despite hiring 31,665 in the year. “From a campus perspective, we are the largest consumer of young talent. We would have hired 11,500-11,600 people in FY26, and this year we will be at 12,000-12,500. The numbers are increasing. Our entire bet is to get people young, train them, assimilate them, and grow them adequately,” Vempati said. 

While AI is reducing the need for some lower-level and transaction processing roles, the bank is initially redeploying staff rather than directly cutting jobs. Redundant roles are being phased out as vacancies are reassessed. “The roles that would have been extinguished would be in some transaction processing, low-level stuff that we feel technology has been able to do,” she said. 

The workforce is being shifted towards relationship management, particularly in commercial banking, wealth management and the micro, small and medium enterprise business. The bank considers relationship management relatively AI-agnostic, as customer interaction, trust, and an understanding of client needs continue to require human intervention. Axis Bank’s attrition rate also declined to 22.4 per cent in FY26 from 25.5 per cent in 2024-25, which the bank chalked up to higher productivity, new ways of working, and greater internal mobility. 

 

The bank’s internal career platform, Thrive, uses AI to match employees with vacancies based on their skills. Employees can apply for internal roles after 16 months, compared with three years earlier. About 65 per cent of employee movement at the bank is now internal, compared with an estimated industry level of 25-30 per cent, Vempati said. 

Technology hiring will account for only a small share of the planned campus intake, with 150-200 of the roughly 12,000 hires expected to be in technology. The larger hiring requirement will be across business and customer-facing roles, risk, compliance, audit, and cybersecurity. 

The lender is also deploying AI-led tools to boost employee productivity. Its Siddhi platform uses customer data to provide employees with targeted prompts, while AI-enabled tools record customer interactions and identify areas for improvement. The bank said employees who adopted the platform saw productivity rise threefold, while those participating in daily learning were 10-15 per cent more productive. 

Vempati said AI would change the nature of jobs rather than simply eliminate them, with some tasks disappearing even as new roles emerge. “I feel 15-20 per cent of the tasks will go away and 20 per cent new roles will emerge in areas like AI tech governance, AI Centre of Excellence value delivery and governance, and data governance. Newer roles are emerging.”