HDFC BANK: MORE ROOM FOR DIVERSITY

A conscious bias towards grooming and retaining women talent helps the country’s largest private lender push up women employees from 18% to 22% in less than five years.

- V. KESHAVDEV

WHEN IT comes to diversity, banks in the U.S. have more female employees (56.3%) than male (43.7%) in its 1.9 million workforce. In comparison, women employees in Indian scheduled commercial banks make up for just 24.17% (397,005) of the 1.64 million employees.

Among private sector banks, while HDFC and ICICI top the charts as the No. 1 and a strong second, the difference between the two is glaring. If ICICI is known as a breeding ground for women talent with quite a few leaders making a mark even outside the bank, HDFC is seen as a high-performance bank but one that lags in diversity. While women comprise 31% of ICICI Bank’s 105,844 employees (including contractual staff), for HDFC Bank the number is 22.02% (37,168) of its 168,760 workforce as of March 31, 2022. Of the 23 senior management team, including MD & CEO Sashidhar Jagdishan, there are just two women group heads, Smita Bhagat, and Ashima Bhat.

But a subtle and definitive shift is underway.