HDFC Bank, the country’s largest private sector, has appointed ICICI group veteran Anup Bagchi as its next managing director and chief executive officer (MD & CEO), following the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) approval.
Bagchi, who has been appointed as additional director from October 2, will take charge as MD & CEO on October 27, a day after incumbent Sashidhar Jagdishan’s term ends.
Bagchi, 56, who is currently the MD & CEO of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Co, will have a three-year term. His remuneration and other terms will be as approved by the RBI.
An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore and Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Bagchi has over three decades of experience across banking, capital markets, wealth management and insurance, and has been associated with the ICICI Group since 1992.
Analysts and investors welcomed the decision.
“The good part is that since Bagchi is young, he can easily serve for a long tenure — say nine, 12 years, etc — and hence can come with a long-term view and vision to change the bank, of course subject to the board and RBI approvals,” said Suresh Ganapathy, MD and head of India research at Macquarie Capital.
HDFC Bank AD₹(American Depositary Receipts) were up 5 per cent after the announcement.
Bagchi has built a diverse career spanning treasury, retail banking, wholesale banking, investment banking, and digital financial services. Over the course of his career, he has held several pivotal leadership positions, including CEO & MD of ICICI Securities and executive director of ICICI Bank. He will be the first outsider to occupy the corner office at HDFC Bank.
This is the second instance of an insurance company CEO taking over as the head of a large private bank. Earlier, Amitabh Chaudhry, who was the CEO of HDFC Life Insurance, became the CEO of Axis Bank – the third largest private bank.
Bagchi served as executive director of ICICI Bank from 2017 to 2023, overseeing retail, business and rural banking, followed by wholesale banking. During his tenure, the bank’s retail mortgage portfolio crossed ₹2 trillion, making it the first private sector lender in India to achieve the milestone. He also held leadership roles across treasury, investment banking and digital financial services.
Bagchi was earlier MD & CEO of ICICI Securities and served as chairman of ICICI Prudential Asset Management Company until May 2023. He was also a director of ICICI Prudential Pension Funds Management Company and ICICI Home Finance.
At ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, which he had led since June 2023, annualised premium equivalent (APE) rose 15 per cent year-on-year to ₹10,407 crore in FY25, crossing the ₹10,000-crore mark for the first time. Profit after tax increased nearly 40 per cent to ₹1,189 crore.
Bagchi’s appointment comes at a critical juncture for the lender, which has faced a series of governance-related developments since March.
According to experts, Bagchi will have a lot on his plate — not least restoring investor confidence after a prolonged period of stock price underperformance, reigniting growth, particularly deposit and current account savings account (Casa) growth, and improving margins.
In March, then part-time chairman Atanu Chakraborty resigned, citing certain “happenings and practices” at the bank that he said were not in line with his values and ethics. A subsequent legal review commissioned by the bank found no basis for his allegations.
Last month, HDFC Bank’s board shortlisted two candidates – Kaizad Bharucha, deputy MD at the bank, was the other candidate – and forwarded their names to the RBI for approval to head the bank. This was after Jagdishan informed the board that he would not seek reappointment when his second term ended in October. Jagdishan took charge in October 2020, succeeding Aditya Puri, and was reappointed in 2023.
In a report on Thursday, Yes Securities praised Bagchi for his skills in stakeholder relations, including the governmental and regulatory ecosystem. “We see this as positive for HDFC Bank,” Yes Securities in the note.
HDFC Bank, along with State Bank of India and ICICI Bank, is classified as a domestic systemically important bank by the RBI and is subject to additional capital requirements.
Although he has been appointed as additional director (non-executive) at HDFC Bank from October 2, he will continue with ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, where he has been serving as the MD & CEO since June 2023, till next week, sources said.
ICICI Prudential Life Insurance is expected to announce its new MD & CEO by next week, with the successor likely to be from ICICI Bank, in keeping with the group’s leadership succession practice. Shikha Sharma, Sandeep Bakhshi, N S Kannan and Anup Bagchi, who have headed the insurer, have all been associated with ICICI Bank, sources said.