Called FiMI Banking, the sovereign compact model was unveiled at the Global Fintech Festival (GFF) 2026. NPCI is also making public the benchmarks, technical report and evaluation sets it uses to test how well AI agents perform banking tasks.
NPCI will work with HDFC Bank to further develop the model, combining NPCI’s technology and AI capabilities with the bank’s expertise in artificial intelligence and banking.
FiMI Banking is built on Gemma, Google’s family of open AI models, and has been further trained by NPCI on Indian retail banking scenarios. The model is designed to handle complex tasks that require an AI agent to understand instructions, use banking tools and take actions within a bank’s rules and systems.
That sets it apart from AI systems primarily designed to answer questions. FiMI Banking is aimed at tasks in which an AI agent needs to reason through a problem and complete multiple steps inside a banking environment.
Open tests for banking AI
Alongside the model, NPCI has released an evaluation framework that allows banks, fintech companies, developers and researchers to test banking AI agents against standardised Indian retail banking scenarios.
The tests use synthetic data and do not contain real customer, account or institutional information, NPCI said.
The accompanying technical report details how the model is evaluated, how scores are calculated and the results, allowing other researchers and developers to reproduce or build on the work.The framework includes two India-specific benchmarks: IndicBank Bench and the Tau² Agentic Banking Benchmark.
IndicBank Bench contains 799 scripted, multi-step cases covering six retail banking areas. It tests AI agents on three broad measures: whether they act safely, whether they take the right actions and whether their responses are appropriate.
The Tau² benchmark contains 1,000 tasks across 50 types of banking scenarios. It uses a simulation in which another AI model plays the role of the customer, allowing the banking agent to be tested through more dynamic, back-and-forth interactions.
The launch marks NPCI’s first move into sovereign AI models built specifically for Indian retail banking. The partnership with HDFC Bank is expected to further develop the technology and its use in banking.
Also read: GFF 2026 | NPCI launches two new agentic AI platforms: How AiNxt and AtOM will work
