The retirement lands at the end of an unusually difficult year for the bank's board. On 12 March 2026 the Audit Committee ordered an internal vigilance investigation into deposits the bank had mobilised from the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation in the period between 2017 and 2021 and how the returns on them had been structured. Six days later, on 18 March 2026, part-time chairman and independent director Atanu Chakraborty resigned with immediate effect, his letter stating that certain practices at the bank over the previous two years were not in alignment with his own values and ethics. The bank's shares fell sharply in India and abroad on the news. Keki Mistry was appointed interim part-time chairman with effect from 19 March 2026, initially for three months, and the RBI extended that arrangement in June. The internal review into the deposits concluded that the matter amounted to business overreach rather than mala fide conduct, and the bank imposed a penalty of Rs 1 lakh each on the MD and CEO and other senior executives. A regular part-time chairman was in place by the middle of the year: the RBI approved the appointment of Rajiv Kumar for a three-year term with effect from 15 July 2026. It is against that background - and with investors watching the bank's governance closely - that Jagdishan told the board he would not seek another term.

For a banking exam candidate the useful content here is institutional rather than personal. First, the succession illustrates how tightly the Reserve Bank controls the top of a private bank: the appointment, reappointment and removal of an MD and CEO all require RBI approval under Section 35B of the Banking Regulation Act, tenure is capped at 15 years by the 2021 governance circular, and the timelines for initiating the process are prescribed rather than left to the board. A CEO transition at an Indian bank is therefore a regulatory process with a board attached, not the other way round. Second, HDFC Bank is systemically important, and Jagdishan's tenure spans the single largest structural change in Indian private banking - the reverse merger of the parent housing finance company into its own banking subsidiary in July 2023, which turned the bank into the country's dominant private lender and left it managing a mortgage book it had not originated. Third, the governance sequence of 2026 - the chairman's resignation, the vigilance review into deposit mobilisation, the penalties, and now a chief executive declining another term - is the kind of case study that ends up in interview boards and descriptive papers on banking governance.