Sashidhar Jagdishan’s tenure as HDFC Bank’s chief executive began with a technology crisis, went on to encompass one of the largest mergers in Indian corporate history, and is ending after a period of unusually intense scrutiny over governance at the country’s largest private-sector lender.
Jagdishan, who succeeded HDFC Bank’s long-serving chief executive Aditya Puri in October 2020, has decided not to seek another term and will retire at the close of business on October 26, 2026, the bank said in a regulatory filing on Saturday (August 29).
The board said it had tried to persuade Jagdishan to reconsider but he reiterated his decision. HDFC Bank has said it will now fast-track the process of appointing his successor.
His nearly six-year stint at the top has seen the bank repair its technology infrastructure, absorb mortgage lender Housing Development Finance Corporation Ltd and recalibrate its balance sheet after the merger. However, the final phase of his tenure has also been marked by the abrupt resignation of former chairman Atanu Chakraborty and a separate internal review of deposit arrangements involving a Maharashtra state agency.
Difficult start under RBI scrutiny
Jagdishan took charge after the Reserve Bank of India approved his appointment for an initial three-year term beginning October 27, 2020. Within weeks, HDFC Bank faced a major regulatory setback.
According to the bank’s annual reports, the RBI in December 2020 barred HDFC Bank from launching new digital business-generating activities under its Digital 2.0 programme and temporarily stopped it from sourcing new credit-card customers. The action followed repeated outages in the bank’s internet banking, mobile banking and payment systems.
Jagdishan acknowledged the problem in his message to shareholders in HDFC Bank’s FY21 annual report, saying its technology capabilities had “justifiably” come under question and that deficiencies in technology and compliance had resulted in regulatory action.
Strengthening technology infrastructure became one of the earliest priorities of his tenure.
The RBI lifted the restriction on new credit-card acquisitions in August 2021 and removed the remaining Digital 2.0 restrictions in March 2022 after the bank carried out remedial measures, according to HDFC Bank’s disclosures. Jagdishan was preparing for a much larger transformation by then.
HDFC merger becomes the defining event
In April 2022, HDFC Ltd and HDFC Bank announced plans to merge. The transaction became effective on July 1, 2023 after receiving regulatory, shareholder and tribunal approvals, according to the bank.
The deal combined India’s largest housing-finance company with the country’s largest private-sector bank and significantly expanded HDFC Bank’s mortgage business and balance sheet.
For Jagdishan, it became the defining corporate event of his tenure. The operational integration was completed without a major disruption but the merger created new balance-sheet challenges.
In HDFC Bank’s FY24 annual report, Jagdishan said borrowings accounted for about 21% of the merged bank’s balance sheet compared with roughly 8% before the transaction. The share of lower-cost current and savings account deposits had also declined.
He described the enlarged institution as “HDFC Bank 2.0” and argued that its financial metrics should not be mechanically compared with those of the pre-merger bank.
The imbalance made deposit mobilisation and reduction of the bank’s elevated credit-deposit ratio a central focus after the merger.
During HDFC Bank’s April 2025 earnings call, Jagdishan told analysts that the credit-deposit ratio had fallen from around 110% at the time of the merger to about 96% by March 2025. He said the bank had deliberately grown deposits faster than loans to normalise the balance sheet.
He reiterated that strategy in an October 2025 analyst call, saying the bank had chosen to bring the ratio down faster than initially envisaged, requiring more aggressive deposit mobilisation even in a relatively tight liquidity environment.
The RBI had meanwhile approved Jagdishan’s second three-year term from October 27, 2023 to October 26, 2026. In seeking shareholder approval for the reappointment, HDFC Bank described him as an integral part of its growth story and cited his experience across banking, finance and economics.
Atanu Chakraborty’s resignation raises governance questions
The most difficult phase of Jagdishan’s second term arrived in March 2026, when HDFC Bank’s part-time chairman and independent director Atanu Chakraborty resigned abruptly.
In his resignation letter, disclosed by the bank, Chakraborty said certain “happenings and practices” he had observed during the previous two years were not in congruence with his personal values and ethics.
He did not identify any specific incident in the resignation letter but the statement immediately raised questions among investors about governance at the bank.
HDFC Bank subsequently appointed US law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and Indian law firm Wadia Ghandy & Co to conduct an external review.
When that exercise concluded in June, HDFC Bank told stock exchanges that the external law firms had found Chakraborty’s statement and its implications were not substantiated by the records and interviews they had examined.
According to the bank’s disclosure, the review covered board and committee records, related communications and interviews with independent directors, Jagdishan and members of senior management.
Chakraborty later questioned the usefulness of the exercise. In comments reported by Livemint, he said he had sought clarity on the scope and legal basis of the review and ultimately did not participate in it.
That distinction remains important as the external review said it found no evidence to substantiate Chakraborty’s broad concerns, while Chakraborty maintained that his resignation reflected his personal assessment of events at the bank.
MSRDC review adds another complication
Governance scrutiny intensified further in July 2026 when HDFC Bank completed an internal review of arrangements for mobilising deposits from the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation in 2017 and 2021.
According to the bank’s disclosures, a special disciplinary committee of independent directors did not find conclusive evidence of mala fide action, personal enrichment or improper motive.
It nevertheless concluded that employees involved had engaged in “business overreach”.
The board issued warning letters and imposed penalties of Rs 1 lakh each on Jagdishan, CFO Srinivasan Vaidyanathan and another senior executive. The issue involved questions over whether the arrangements were fully consistent with RBI directions governing deposit pricing.
The action was significant because the board imposed individual accountability on senior management even while ruling out fraud or personal enrichment.
Tenure defined by transformation and scrutiny
Jagdishan’s tenure therefore falls broadly into two phases.
Operationally, his tenure took HDFC Bank through a technology overhaul, the pandemic, a change in regulatory expectations and an unprecedented merger that dramatically expanded the bank’s scale and mortgage franchise. At the same time, his final phase brought governance questions that required external and internal investigations, even though the Atanu Chakraborty review found no evidence supporting the former chairman’s broad concerns.
His decision to leave is also a reversal of earlier expectations. Jagdishan had previously indicated publicly that he was willing to continue for another term if the board and regulatory process approved it.
When he retires in October, Jagdishan will leave behind a much larger and structurally different HDFC Bank than the one he inherited in 2020.
The HDFC Ltd merger is likely to remain the defining achievement of his time at the top. But the final assessment of his tenure will also depend on how successfully the bank converts the scale created by that merger into sustainable growth. And also how the institution responds to the governance scrutiny that marked his final year.