Senior executives from RBL Bank, IndusInd Bank and IDFC First Bank have called for Indian lenders to move from limited artificial-intelligence experiments to controlled, large-scale implementation built around defined business outcomes, higher-quality data and continued human accountability.
RBL Bank Managing Director and CEO R Subramaniakumar said Indian banks have already identified a wide range of potential applications and are not significantly behind international peers in evaluating the technology. The more difficult stage is converting those applications into production systems that can operate within the sector’s regulatory, security and risk-management requirements.
Subramaniakumar said the underlying data must be sufficiently strong in volume, value and quality for AI systems to produce dependable results. Poor or fragmented data can undermine model performance even when the model and computing infrastructure are technically capable.
IndusInd Bank Managing Director and CEO Rajiv Anand said implementation should begin with a clearly defined problem rather than with the technology itself. Banks are evaluating AI for areas including customer service, fraud monitoring, credit processes, employee productivity, software development and internal operations, but executives emphasised that deployment needs measurable objectives rather than broadly framed experimentation.
IDFC First Bank Managing Director and CEO V Vaidyanathan placed data governance alongside the technology stack and human decision-making. He estimated that banks already spend about 10% of operating expenditure on technology, making the effectiveness of those investments increasingly important as AI adds new infrastructure, integration and governance requirements.
The executives also retained a central role for human oversight, particularly where AI-supported decisions affect customers, credit, compliance or financial risk. Scaled adoption will require systems for testing, monitoring, documentation, access control and escalation, alongside cyber defences capable of responding to AI-enabled threats.
The discussion reflects the transition underway in India’s banking sector as generative and agentic systems move from internal demonstrations toward customer-facing and operational workflows. The banks’ stated priorities place data preparation, governance and accountability ahead of indiscriminate deployment, while maintaining pressure to show measurable improvements in customer experience and productivity.
