HDFC Bank on Thursday said there is no clarity yet on when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will lift the embargo on new digital launches but said the bank is in touch with the regulator on this issue. The bank also said that the outages it faced recently were not because of capacity issues in the bank’s infrastructure but hardware related issues.
“All the elements around technology area that the auditor wanted to look, have been completed and the reports have been submitted to the regulator, we are awaiting further directions from the regulator in this matter,” said Ramesh Lakshminarayanan – Chief Information Officer – HDFC Bank. “I don’t have the timelines now, I can’t second guess, but we definitely hope we would see some feedback from the regulatory point.”
In December, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) ordered HDFC Bank to freeze new digital banking initiatives and credit card issuances until it addressed the lapses that had caused multiple glitches in its internet and mobile banking systems over the past two years. In February, the regulator appointed an external firm to conduct a special audit of the entire information technology (IT) infrastructure of the bank.
HDFC Bank, which issues nearly 150,000 credit cards a month, was directed by the RBI in December to stop issuing fresh cards until it had sorted out its tech problems. The bank also couldn’t launch any new digital initiatives. In February, the regulator appointed an external firm for carrying out a special audit of HDFC Bank’s IT infrastructure. The report was submitted last month.
Lakshminarayanan also said that the bank is working on a digital factory and a consumer factory to manage growth in customer acquisitions and transactions. While the digital factory will focus on launching new digital products, the enterprise factory will focus on revamping existing IT infrastructure.
The bank is set to launch multiple digital product rollouts in the next 15-24 months. In the short run it will focus on critical services like payments, cards and customer experience. Towards the end of the year, the bank will upgrade its IT platforms.
He also added that the recent digital challenges were more of a hardware issue and had nothing to do with low system capacity.
