Top Citi hires exit Axis Bank’s retail business amid credit card woes

Mumbai: Nearly a year after Axis Bank sealed its acquisition of Citibank’s credit card business, the private sector lender is witnessing exits of some senior figures who joined as part of that merger.

Arjun Chowdhry, group executive in charge of affluent banking, cards, payments and retail lending at Axis Bank, has resigned citing his wish to pursue an entrepreneurial path, according to a stock exchange notification on Friday. Alongside, Arvind Singla, president for retail banking operations at the bank, has also stepped down, according to two persons aware of the matter.

Both bankers had joined Axis from Citibank as part of the merger process, which began two years ago. At Citi, Chowdhry was head, consumer bank, and Singla was managing director and head of consumer operations.

Their exits come at a time when the bank is facing challenges in its retail business, including credit cards. The deal with Citi had made Axis the country’s fourth-largest issuer of credit cards. However, the bank slowed down its card issuances over the past year following asset quality concerns. Credit card issuances fell to much less than a million cards per quarter from Q1 of FY25 onwards. In previous quarters, more than 1 million cards were issued per quarter.

According to the bank’s investor presentation, at the end of the June quarter, its credit card portfolio grew 1% sequentially and 2% year-on-year (y-o-y) to ₹43,517 crore, compared to 4% y-o-y growth in Q3 ended December.

Alongside, NPAs (non-performing assets) in the overall retail loan portfolio rose to 2.1% in Q1 of FY26 from 1.6% in the previous quarter, per data from the investor presentation, which the bank attributed to changes in technical classification of loans. Overall NPA—including all loans—stood at 1.57% at the end of first quarter of FY26 compared to 1.28% in the previous quarter.

The two bankers and Axis Bank declined to comment on Mint’s queries when contacted.

“We see a general trend, particularly in unsecured where there is stress across multiple segments–that stress is being driven by indebtedness, it is being driven by higher degrees of loans which aren’t necessarily being able to be serviced by those customers,” said Amitabh Choudhary, managing director and chief executive officer, Axis bank in the Q1 FY26 earnings call. “It’s too early in the cycle to take a call either way. And I think the way to look at this is that every lender’s vintage distribution will be different.”

That said, the management has assured an improvement in asset quality in the unsecured loan portfolio. The bank has also made additional provisions to offset any increase in bad loans, as mentioned in the analyst call.

“We have seen improvement on the credit card side and stabilization in the personal loan side,” said Choudhary. “We did mention the fact that all the key indicators, which includes bounce rates, early delinquency, collection efficiencies have all shown an improving trend and that is something that provides us comfort.”

Analysts continue to be bullish on Axis Bank. “The recognition of current asset quality in Axis Bank is not directly linked to the Citi portfolio,” said Asutosh Mishra, head institutional equities research, Ashika Stock Broking, adding that overall, the Citi portfolio on the asset side has primarily supported the bank in strengthening its position in the credit card segment.

“Moreover, many of these customers belong to high-rated segments, which have not shown any signs of asset quality stress,” Mishra said.

Axis Bank had completed the merger with Citibank’s consumer businesses last year. In a deal valued at ₹1,11,603 crore, Axis had acquired the credit card, loans, wealth management and retail operations businesses of Citibank. The bank added 2.5 million credit cards of Citibank with a portfolio of ₹8,900 crore, taking its overall outstanding credit cards to 10.6 million and net portfolio to ₹24,400 crore, according to its investor presentation of 30 March 2022.

Axis Bank shares have risen nearly 30% since the completion of acquisition of Citibank’s consumer portfolio in March 2023.