Viksit Bharat Banking Needs Leaders Who Think Beyond Functions

2047 will mark India’s hundred years of independence. A nation that is vibrant, aspirational, and ever spirited requires an equally resilient, robust, and restructured economic stability. Viksit Bharat 2047 is the goal and the responsibility of fueling this vision is on the Indian BFSI sector.

As the backbone of Viksit Bharat, the BFSI domain serves as the most critical pillar of transformation. To achieve the $30tn ambition, the banking sector should emphasize capital base expansion, MSME credits for grassroot entrepreneurship, undertake megaprojects in terms of infrastructure, green energy, and more. All this while ensuring financial inclusion.

To power this goal, the 2026-27 Union Budget proposed the setting up of a high-level committee on banking for Viksit Bharat, signaling an era of reform, where the measure and attribute of a banking leader has shifted from mere operational excellence to systemic stewardship.

As the banking sector undergoes a metamorphosis, policies are changing and roles are evolving. At this inflection point, I want to breakdown what makes the new-age banker and why the future of Indian BFSI needs leaders who can think beyond functions.

From a Product Expert to an Experience Architect

In 2024, the nation’s GDP stood at $4.88tn and Viksit Bharat 2047 aspires for a GDP of $30tn. This ambitious goal requires banking leaders to move away from the mindset of management by objective to leadership by intent.

The first step is all about outgrowing conventions, where a banking leader was a master of a single vertical – retail, corporate, or risk. Today, the focus is on them becoming horizontal and cross-functional. They need to be architects of customer journeys, orchestrators of AI, digital polymaths, bridges between 3rd party fintechs and government and more.

This also means that future bankers and leaders must be multifaceted and shoulder macro-level objectives apart from their conventional operational duties. This shift puts policy alignment before job roles, meaning every banking leader is also a de-facto economic strategist tasked with the task of translating the vision of a $30tn economy into reality.

Enablers of Financial Inclusion

Around 65% of the Indian population resides in rural regions. So, the journey of Viksit Bharat calls for a fundamental migration of banking capital and talent from tier 1 cities to non-metros and rural heartlands. This shift does not mean that rural banking is just urban banking but at a smaller scale. It demands a different leadership DNA altogether.

Prioritizing Risk Intelligence Over Avoidance

In tier 1 cities, lending is based on CIBIL scores. But a majority of the rural population is part of the ‘informal’ community. So, the leadership mandate involves changing from score-based approvals to cash-flow based lending, which again stems from understanding local harvest cycles, regional challenges, limitations, and strengths.

An empathy-driven approach is crucial for future bankers as people in this region face information asymmetry, technological challenges, and more. Bankers must lead with empathy, context awareness, and vernacular capabilities.

Besides, this is also where their tech literacy comes into action, where they arrive as phygital experts, transforming geography-specific threats and challenges into opportunities to launch new products, models, and more through technology.

Bankers as Regulatory Enforcers

In this transformative phase, governance aspects such as grievance redressal and consumer protection are no longer backend operations or checkbox line items. They are now a mandatory boardroom priority. Under the RBI’s Integrated Ombudsman Scheme 2026, enforcement of consumer rights is about to become critical with higher penalties (with a 50% compensation hike to up to 30 lacs).

This demands a board-level oversight of internal ombudsmen, indicating that airtight compliance and stringent governance are now a litmus test for the leadership. What this means to future bankers is the evolution from prescriptive solutioning to proactive mitigation. Instead of bankers waiting for an audit to report an error, they must implement continuous compliance monitoring through:

• Real-time AML monitoring to freeze money laundering attempts
• Tighten compliance-by-design protocols
• Better understand and implement XAI
• Enforce data sovereignty through the use of a Unified Lending Interface and more

Reimagining BFSI Education

I personally believe any macro-level transformation starts at the granular level. The stronger the foundation, the more stable the layers. To bring the vision of Viksit Bharat 2047 to life, what needs change is our approach to BFSI education. Technical skills and capabilities are critical, but the immediate demand now is a curriculum to develop policy-native leaders; visionaries who not only understand the how but the why as well.

The Viksit leader is someone who is agile and has cognitive surplus. To achieve this, BFSI education 2.0 must focus on incorporating modules such as:

• Policy literacy to understand foundational economic reasoning and intent so leaders can anticipate policy changes instead of playing catch-up.
• Macroeconomic awareness, where they align banking strategies with national priorities to operate on a more holistic level
• Ethical judgment that instills the knowledge and experience future bankers must know to balance systemic stability and long-term national trust
• RegTech that involves future banking leaders also developing an understanding of algorithmic governance, forensic readiness, responsible and ethical AI enablement and more

AI in Banking: How is Viksit Bharat Banking AI-Empowered

AI today has now moved past from being just a fancy fintech experiment. It’s gradually becoming a core aspect, powering banking operations at scale. With the right AI training intervention, we can enable future bankers to:

• Leverage agentic AI to complement their job roles, such as stress monitoring, real-time fraud analytics, and similar
• Hyper-personalize at scale for tailored credit solutions to the bottom-of-the-funnel customers
• Increase their bank’s efficiency ratios and develop a competitive moat
• Tackle and mitigate sophisticated attacks and deploy mule-hunter AI to minimize consumer-specific attack campaigns and more

The Way Forward

To be on track to achieving the Viksit Bharat 2047 goal, I feel a simple hack is to have the proposed 3-Kartavya Framework as the roadmap. The framework brilliantly breaks down the overall agenda and expectations of the banking sector:

• Focus on economic growth
• Capacity building
• And inclusive banking

The three aspects summarize efficiency, technology, and governance aspects succinctly to consistently remind every banking leader (current and future) of the goal in their hands. We are in an exciting phase, and it will be rewarding to witness the transformation from a growing economy to a developed nation.