Mumbai: India's largest private sector lender, HDFC Bank, is shifting more employees from backend operations to customer-facing roles as technology-driven efficiencies free up capacity, Managing Director and CEO Sashidhar Jagdishan said in the bank's latest annual report published Saturday.

"Our focus is on enabling our people to work more productively, and with greater alignment to our customer needs, leveraging technology," Jagdishan wrote in his letter to shareholders. "We are consciously redeploying talent from backend functions, where we are able to bring technology-led efficiencies, to customer-facing roles." Jagdishan identified cyber fraud and dispute resolution as two priority areas for the bank going forward.

"We are accelerating our investments in AI, improving our communications with customers, and empowering our frontline colleagues with better tools and knowledge to tackle the dispute resolution area," he said.

On cybersecurity more broadly, Jagdishan noted that the bank has strengthened its defenses as digital threats grow "more sophisticated and less predictable."

He said advances in automation, analytics and emerging AI techniques are shaping both how attacks evolve and how they are detected, prompting the bank to introduce "selective AI-assisted capabilities into our security processes in a phased and responsible manner. "These early initiatives are improving the speed, context and accuracy of monitoring, helping teams flag unusual activity earlier and respond faster. Central to this effort has been Neev, HDFC Bank's in-house foundational AI model.

"A key enabler has been the development of our in-house foundational, platform-led model, Neev. This provides a unified base for developing and deploying AI capabilities across the Bank, ensuring consistency, reuse and alignment with enterprise standards," Jagdishan said.

Branches remain central to customer relationships, particularly in India's smaller towns and rural markets, Jagdishan said.