Axis Bank witnesses rise in attrition rate despite acquisition of Citibank India’s consumer business

Axis Bank saw a jump in its attrition in FY23, with the employee turnover rate rising to 34.8 per cent in FY23 from 31.6 per cent in FY22 and 19.1 per cent in FY21.

This despite the bank absorbing over 97 per cent of Citi’s employees, of 3,200 people, following the acquisition of Citbank India’s consumer business effective March 2023, as per data in the bank’s annual report for FY23.

This implies that bulk of the turnover was seen in the bank’s organic employee base. The turnover rate for female employees was 35.9 per cent and for male employees at 34.4 per cent in FY23.

Attrition rate

The total employee count stood at 91,898 permanent employees as of March 2023, which included 68,308 male employees and 23,587 female employees.

In comparison, it had 85,815 permanent employees as of March 2022, with the bank seeing an attrition rate of 33.2 per cent in female employees and 31.1 per cent in male employees during FY22.

For both the years, the turnover rate was highest for the 21-30 years age bracket at 24 per cent, followed by the 31-44 years bracket at 14 per cent and the 45-59 years bracket at 8 per cent.

• Read: Axis Bank posts ₹5,728-cr loss on one-time hit due to Citi acquisition

The median remuneration of employees increased by 7.6 per cent y-o-yin FY23 as against 6.2 per cent in FY22. This resulted in staff costs increasing by 16 per cent y-o-y to ₹8,797crore in FY23. This included only one month expenses relating to the 3,200 Citi employees who joined the bank from March 1.

Axis Bank said that 46 per cent of the vacant positions were filled by internal transfers across the Bank and subsidiaries during FY23.

“Given the powerful integrated platform we are building, we will continue to grow 400 to 600 bps faster than the industry, in the medium to long term. The significant strides we made during the year on our customer obsession journey, digital capabilities, Bharat Banking and successful acquisition of Citibank India Consumer Business further give us the confidence in sustaining this performance,” MD and CEO Amitabh Chaudhry said in the report.