New Delhi, Aug. 31 -- Six years after taking the CEO job nobody expected him to get, Sashidhar Jagdishan is walking away from HDFC Bank Ltd., and this time, he's not looking back.

His decision not to seek a third term, announced Saturday, comes barely five months after chairman Atanu Chakraborty's abrupt resignation over unspecified "governance" concerns, plunging India's largest private lender into fresh leadership uncertainty just as it was trying to move past the last one.

Jagdishan's journey is a classic insider story. A finance manager in 1996 who spent three decades climbing to CFO and finally CEO in 2020, inheriting the position mid-pandemic. Colleagues describe him as thoughtful and willing to listen, unlike his predecessor Adit...