Rajiv Anand Takes Hotseat To Turn Around Indusind Bank

According to Shriram Subramanian, founder and managing director of InGovern Research Services, “Rajiv Anand will have to ensure that the risk management and credit underwriting processes are overhauled. For a few quarters, the bank may write-off all bad loans and clean up the balance sheet. This is a standard practice seen globally known as kitchen sinking when a new CEO takes charge of a bank after a crisis.”

Aged 59, Anand is a chartered accountant with over 35 years of experience across asset management, retail banking, and wholesale banking. He joined Axis Group in 2009 as founding managing director of Axis Asset Management Co. In 2013, he transitioned to Axis Bank as president of retail banking and later assumed leadership of its wholesale banking division in 2018.

Brokerage firm Jefferies described Anand’s appointment as a key positive development for IndusInd Bank, given his longstanding tenure and experience at Axis Bank.

According to a Deven Choksey report, with Anand at helm, the reshaping of IndusInd Bank is likely to focus on strengthening governance and risk management involving overhauling internal controls, restoring regulatory trust, and capital infusion. The second priority will be to drive sustainable financial performance, and to revitalize the brand and investor confidence. “We feel his leadership is expected to yield strategic repositioning of IndusInd Bank,” added Choksey.

The lender has been without a full-time CEO since the resignation of Sumant Kathpalia at the end of April. Kathpalia stepped down, taking moral responsibility for the bank’s derivatives accounting controversy that surfaced earlier this year. The bank’s accounting lapse led to a substantial loss of approximately Rs 1960 crore not only impacting the bank’s financials but had also raised questions about its internal controls and risk management practices. The departure of key leaders and the subsequent regulatory oversight from the RBI and SEBI created a leadership vacuum that the Bank has now filled with Anand’s appointment.

IndusInd stock is however still down 43 percent over the past one year and has declined 11.6 percent in 2025 year-to-date. The Bank’s financial performance has seen turbulence in recent quarters. The bank posted a net loss in the March 2025 quarter, its first in 20 years, owing to the accounting issues. However, it returned to low profitability in the June 2025 quarter with a 72 per cent YoY drop in
net profit to ₹604 crore compared with ₹2,171 crore in Q1FY25.