HDFC Bank on Thursday said the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had issued an order asking the bank to temporarily stop all new digital banking initiatives and sourcing of new credit card customers.
The order, issued on Wednesday, comes after certain incidents of outages in the Internet banking / mobile banking / payment utilities of the bank over the past two years, the latest of which occurred on November 21 due to a power failure in the primary data centre, HDFC Bank said. “In addition, the order states that the bank’s Board [must] examine the lapses and fix accountability. The above measures shall be considered for lifting upon satisfactory compliance with the major critical observations as identified by the RBI,” it said in a regulatory filing.
India’s largest private sector bank said that over the past two years it had taken several measures to fortify its IT systems and would continue to ‘work swiftly to close out the balance and would continue to engage with the banking regulator in this regard’.
“The bank has been taking conscious, concrete steps to remedy the recent outages on its digital banking channels and assures its customers that it expects the current supervisory action will have no impact on its existing credit cards, digital banking channels and existing operations,” it said. It added these measures would not materially impact its overall business.
The stock fell 2.13% on the BSE to ₹1,377.05 and was the biggest loser on the Bankex.
In a letter to customers, the bank’s MD and CEO Sashi Jagdishan said existing customers should not worry and may continue to transact without any concerns.
