Private banks up the ante on campus hiring in hunt for niche, tech expertise

The placement websites display the names of ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, HSBC India, IDFC First Bank, Citibank, Axis Bank and growing list of global wealth‑management names. Banking, financial services and insurance firms have not just returned to campuses, they have arrived with a sharper focus, deeper pockets and a very clear script for where the talent will go.

Last year, the picture looked very different.The post-pandemic frenzy in hiring had ebbed, and lenders were also hiring fewer people due to slow attrition and higher dependency on contract employees.

Financial firms’ return to campuses points to a structural shift in how financial firms are building for the future. As banks expand global capability centres, deepen wealth businesses and place engineers at the heart of their core systems, recruitment is increasingly about strengthening digital muscle and long-term competitiveness, not merely filling vacancies.

The campus hiring push also coincides with banks reporting strong credit growth on the back of a nascent comeback in corporate credit demand. Bank credit growth was at 14.6% end January, up from 11.4% a year ago, data from the Reserve Bank of India shows.

According to a Bengaluru-based recruiter, with credit growth now higher than 2024 and 2025, there is more expansion on the cards for banks, and they need more hirings across teams—from frontline to regional managers.

Capability push

With digital channels taking over from branch queues, banks are beginning to rebuild, not just headcount but capability. “Finance has emerged as one of the most prominent and fastest-growing sectors on campus, both in terms of recruiter participation and student placements,” said Himanshu Rai, the director at Indian Institute of Management, Indore.

Rai said that for the batch of 2026, over 21% of the batch secured roles in finance, compared to 14.5% in 2025 and 19% in 2024.

“Leading global investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Barclays, Citi, Nomura, and Deutsche Bank, along with prominent financial services firms including HSBC, Crisil, and DE Shaw, were among the key recruiters,” he added. “The process also saw strong engagement from major Indian banking and financial institutions such as ICICI Bank, IDFC First Bank, Yes Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, and Aditya Birla Capital, as well as reputed investment and alternative asset management firms.”

The flood of offers is not evenly spread. Campus placements now cluster tightly around three rising verticals. The first is global capability centres—off‑shore or near‑shore units that Indian banks, GCC‑focused quantitative platforms and foreign investment banks are scaling for operations, compliance, risk analytics and customer‑experience innovation.

“The banking sector had a massive focus on hiring for GCCs, as day-to-day banking and product operations, including HR and finance, move to those hubs,” said Upasana Agarwal, partner specializing in the financial services sector at hiring firm ABC Consultants.

The second cluster is investment and wealth management. As India’s equity savings culture deepens and family offices multiply, both foreign banks and domestic private banks are expanding their advisory, product design and client‑relationship teams.

“We bring graduates into a diverse mix of areas — technology, data, operations, product, strategy, and critical governance functions such as risk, compliance, and internal audit — through robust pipeline programmed that enable them to develop into industry leaders,” said Rajkamal Vempati, group executive and head of human resources at Axis Bank.

Niche skills

Vempati highlighted that in 2025, more than a third of the bank’s hires came from campus and academia, with over 10,000 young professionals joining from leading engineering and management institutes across the country. “Where specialized skills are required, such as in our wealth business or in analytics and technology functions, we also tap into executive MBA cohorts from top-tier B-schools and engineering colleges to bring in niche expertise,” she said.

Even Citibank highlighted that it hired for investment banking roles apart from markets, corporate and commercial banking, services, and functions such as internal audit and human resources.

“Citi India continues to hire from the top schools in the country, which are a great source for building our talent and leadership pipeline,” said Tooba Modassir, chief human resources officer at Citi India. “Over the years, this talent has been critical for our talent pipeline to leadership roles, successively taking on wider and more challenging roles at Citi, not just in India but across the globe as well.”

Technology push

And then there is the big story—technology‑led banking. Under the broader banner of online retail banking and digital‑led transformation, banks are handpicking engineers not just to maintain core systems but to build the new architecture of customer engagement.

“As banks evolve into digital‑first, platform‑led organizations, technology talent becomes core to the business. Engineers are central to our Tech North Star—designing scalable platforms, AI‑driven intelligence, resilient cybersecurity, and data‑led customer experiences,” said Anupam Kaura, chief human resources officer at Kotak Mahindra Bank.

Kaura added that they have hired 44 management trainees from IITs in Bombay, Madras, Delhi, Kanpur, Guwahati, BHU, Hyderabad across roles including data science and analytics, business intelligence and software evelopment engineers. “Deep STEM capabilities enable us to build a fully digital, secure, and intelligent banking ecosystem that can continuously adapt, innovate, and scale with changing customer and market needs,” he said.

Even global banks such as HSBC are following the same script, getting in more technology experts. “Over the past two years, we’ve seen a fivefold surge in engineering hires, reflecting our strategic shift toward building a tech-first organization,” said Archana Chadha, head human resources at HSBC India. “We have hired 80-100 graduates and post-graduates last year, similar to the previous year, and continue to bring in exceptional talent from diverse academic background.”

“Our young engineers have become an integral part of critical transformation teams across the bank. They are simplifying processes daily, embedding automation and smarter workflows across functions. We are building a thriving community of engineers, collaborating across domains including data, automation, AI, cloud and platform engineering,” Chadha added.

Rating agencies insist that the increase in fresher talent is an indication of high attrition.

“Generally, the attrition is higher at the entry level, thereby requiring hiring of fresher talent. Most freshers switch the job within the first two-three years of joining, so the new hires have to be increased accordingly keeping that in mind,” said Anil Gupta, senior vice-president and co-group head at Icra, highlighting that a majority of workforce hiring in financial services comprises of freshers.