Latest news with #GenAIAcademy
Mint
15-07-2025
- Business
- Mint
HDFC Bank raises bets on GenAI for productivity gains
Mumbai: India's largest private sector lender HDFC Bank has identified over 15 programmes that will use generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), chief executive Sashidhar Jagdishan told shareholders in the FY25 annual report. The bank, said Jagdishan, has transitioned from pilot projects to centralised, 'platform-driven GenAI strategy' for improving staff productivity and customer service. The bank has also launched a GenAI Academy to accelerate capability in generative AI. 'As GenAI becomes central to both current and future organisational capability, we are investing in developing skills in this space through a structured academy model, offering robust curriculum and tiered proficiency levels,' he said. Mint reported in December that banks like SBI, Bank of Baroda, Axis Bank, and HDFC Bank are developing targeted AI use cases through internal teams and external experts. Experts had then pointed out that the rise of AI in Indian banking was a long time coming. Traditionally, banks were going to tech services firms to deploy such technologies, but today, as the tech ramps up, they have become one of the biggest recruiters of engineering talent. Jagdisdhan said that with rising threats like phishing, deepfakes, and impersonation scams, the bank has upgraded to the next generation cybersecurity operations centre (CSOC), powered by AI and machine learning capabilities. He added that the bank also checks their systems regularly for any weakness through vulnerability assessment and penetration testing programmes to monitor all digital entry points to manage exposure. 'This also ensures the software is always up to date and strengthens protection against email-based attacks,' he said. The bank's 'Vigil Aunty' (VA) campaign, which educates customers on safe banking practices, said Jagdishan, is an example of how cybersecurity is about user awareness and tech infrastructure. 'We remain focused on being a cyber resilient, regulatorily compliant and trusted institution that can adapt and succeed in the emerging risk landscape,' he said. Cybercrimes have again come to the fore on the back of what is referred to as digital arrest crimes. Rising incidents of digital arrest—an online scam in which perpetrators extort money from victims by impersonating high-ranking law enforcement officials and threatening arrests and other legal actions—over the past two years have caused a huge amount of money being stolen from personal accounts, with attackers often being based in other nations. Mint reported on 14 July how a precedent-setting digital arrest hearing at India's top consumer court last Monday put the spotlight on banks' potentially heightened liabilities and responsibilities towards their customers amid a surge in digital arrest crimes in the country. Meanwhile, during FY25, the bank expanded its branch network by more than 700, reaching a total of 9,455 branches as of 31 March. Over the past four years, HDFC has fully digitised most of its retail and MSME acquisition and service journeys, said Jagdishan. The bank's results for FY25 represented the first full year of operations since the merger when it took into its fold erstwhile parent and mortgage behemoth Housing Development Finance Corp. (HDFC) on 1 July 2023. The bank's balance sheet expanded over 8% to ₹ 39.1 trillion in FY25.
Forbes
13-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
It's Time For Agentic L&D
Getty If there's room for Agentic AI in the headlines, there is room for something else these days: Agentic Learning and Development or Agentic L&D for short. Over the years, organizations have allowed the Learning and Development function to become too polite. L&D is overly eager to serve at the edge of business instead of operating at the center. This situation is no longer acceptable in an era dominated by AI. The L&D function doesn't have to get rude, but it should get ready to start swinging. Agentic L&D is a necessary new term for an essential new way of thinking, one that positions Learning and Development not as content delivery, but as a capability sherpa. It sits inside the work, not around it. It influences business outcomes, not just training metrics. It behaves as though it's part of the business strategy, not simply trying to keep up with it. If you've seen the recent job description for Microsoft's Director of AI-Era Skilling Transformation, you've already seen what is coming. The job doesn't mention instructional design. Not at all. It talks about embedding learning into the systems, sprints, and day-to-day moments that define real work. "This role exists to deliver transformative skilling experiences that intrinsically motivate individuals and teams to skill through exploration, demonstration, and real-world experiences," states the posting. In other words, it's calling for Agentic L&D, whether the company uses the term or not. EY's GenAI Academy is already doing it: contextual learning embedded into role-based journeys. Not bolted on nor tucked away in an LMS. It's lived, applied, and then measured. If organizations are serious about preparing teams and people for what's next—and for what's already arrived—then the days of learning as an accessory are over. It's time to stop reporting on completions, taking orders, or just offering content. It's time for L&D to move from passive support to active influence. It's time for Agentic L&D. From Around the Work to Inside It L&D has trained an entire profession to operate like instructional caterers. Stakeholders place the order, L&D delivers a menu of options, and everyone gets their post-course certificate. Meanwhile, the real work—the problems, the decisions, the friction—keeps happening elsewhere. Agentic L&D doesn't hover at the margins. It embeds and operates at the source, at the point of the work. As author Harold Jarche wrote back in 2013, "Work is learning and learning is the work." Agentic L&D takes that idea seriously and operationalizes it at scale. EY's GenAI Talent Academy, as mentioned earlier, pushes in this direction. Their role-based pathways don't require sign-up. They shadow actual workflows, adapting to projects in motion. L&D stops being an interruption (or outpost) and becomes an enabler inside the work. From Content to Context People do not necessarily need more learning content. It's available at the fingertips of your next AI prompt. The digital shelves are now full of content, let alone what already exists in the various learning and content portals. What's missing is context; learning that lands where the friction actually lives. Agentic L&D begins with a different brief. Not "build a course," but "find the pain." Where are employees struggling to act? Where are decisions being delayed or reversed? Where are teams improvising because the current system no longer fits? Where are the skills or role gaps? Microsoft's recently released AI-Era Skilling job brief is clear. Don't upload content; instead, embed and then align to capability. Change how work is accomplished, not just how it's taught. "Champion the shift from episodic learning to continuous, AI-augmented skilling embedded directly into the flow of work through business aligned co creation," also states the job brief. This change means there will be a need to rewrite default behaviors and expectations for L&D practitioners. More in-line decision trees. Fewer generic case studies. More job-embedded prompts and "what do you think" open-ended questions in the flow of work. And yes, that potentially also means fewer formal courses and more short-form AI nudges that help to change and calibrate behavior. Both AI and human L&D performance coaches are going to crush it. Agentic L&D does not try to keep up with the business; instead, it walks beside it, listening, adapting, and building learning directly into the flow of work. While content may be present—and it should—it also starts with context. What is the business context of the performance gap? From Input to Outcome If the L&D function is still reporting on attendance and satisfaction, they have missed the point. It's not about participation; it's more about assisting in human potential transformation, which involves a better understanding not only of what goes into the learning (and the team member) but also of the outcome. Agentic L&D measures capability velocity, which is the time it takes to move from friction to fluency or from confusion to competence. At a minimum, it is about shifting from an in-role skill or task to the next level. According to Continu, organizations using data-driven L&D see retention increase by 46%, productivity by 37%, onboarding acceleration by 34%, and per-employee revenue jump by 29%. These are business outcomes! Ultimately, Agentic L&D ought to be tracking retention uplift, error reduction, skill uptake, competence gap analysis, and even career or role mobility optionality. LinkedIn's 2024 Workplace Learning Report suggests organizations that link learning to talent movement don't just keep people; they grow them. Isn't this the actual point of L&D? What Comes Next The thinking around Agentic L&D is not about a rebrand; it's a full-scale L&D reset. (And I don't have it all figured out yet. I'm still noodling.) Learning isn't solely a calendar of events or content on a platform. It isn't simply a set of course completions with colorful dashboards. It is an embedded 'guide on the side' agent who is woven into the culture, decisions, rituals, systems, and workflows of the organization. It is part AI and part human, but led by the humans. Agentic L&D consults, curates, and activates. It doesn't just take orders. It is the fulcrum of performance change across the organization. If AI has earned the adjective agentic, so should the L&D function. But the function itself needs to be reset—and led—accordingly. Because if L&D does not become 'agents in the business' (or Agentic L&D), the work will move on without it. And this time, it won't come back.
