Specialist in Indian Banking and Economic Research

Hemindra Hazari

Is a Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI) registered research analyst with over 25 years experience in the Indian capital markets with a specialization in banking and economy research and has managerial experience of establishing profitable equities business, leading and mentoring analysts.  He has worked with prominent foreign and domestic capital market firms such as UBS, Societe Generale, HSBC, ASK Raymond James  and Karvy Stock  Broking and is a regular guest on business media channels and is respected for his non-consensus view on stocks and the market.

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The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) decision to temporarily put a halt to all digital launches of <a href="https://www.smartkarma.com/entities/hdfc-bank-ltd-4b6b7a92-9087-468d-9dbe-ab169e77f014" target="_blank" data-smartkarma-citation="entities:558:1" rel="noopener">HDFC Bank (HDFCB IN)</a>’s financial products and also cease all new issuances of credit cards by the bank brings to the fore the huge reputational risk on account of the bank ignoring its technology issues. But further, it impacts its future revenue, especially from its highly lucrative credit cards business. The bank is the market leader in credit cards, with a 31.4% share by card spend, and its 3 month average (July-September) addition was 136,044 cards per month, which is the likely loss to the bank as rivals compete for these additional cards in the following months. In FY2020, <a href="https://www.hdfcbank.com/content/bbp/repositories/723fb80a-2dde-42a3-9793-7ae1be57c87f/?path=/Footer/About%20Us/Investor%20Relation/Detail%20PAges/inverstor%20relation/PDF%27s/Q3FY20%20Rev.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">95%</a> of customers initiated transactions via its digital (internet and mobile) channel and as on September 30, the bank had consolidated assets of US$ 225 bn. In <a href="https://hemindrahazari.com/2019/12/09/hdfc-banks-digital-disaster-no-recovery-plan/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">December 2019</a>, this analyst was one of the few to highlight the obvious deficiencies in HDFC Bank’s digital operations, the lack of clear and relevant communication to the public and to customers by the bank, and, most worryingly, the absence of a disaster recovery plan, which should have been taken up on a war footing by the bank’s board of directors.The RBI’s order specifies that the “Bank’s board examines the lapses and fixes accountability”, which indicates that in the past year the HDFC Bank’s high profile <a href="https://www.hdfcbank.com/personal/about-us/corporate-governance/composition-of-the-board" target="_blank" rel="noopener">board of directors</a> has not given this issue the importance it deserves by examining the cause for the failure of its digital operations, and the remedial actions to be adopted to prevent its recurrence; nor has it fixed accountability. A professional board would have given such a basic task high priority soon after the lengthy digital outages of last December. That it takes a humiliating public directive from the banking regulator to remind the HDFC Bank’s Board to do its job is indicative of the corporate governance practiced in India’s most valuable bank.

The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) decision to temporarily put a halt to all digital launches of HDFC Bank (HDFCB IN)’s financial products and also cease all new issuances of credit cards by the bank brings to the fore the huge reputational risk on account of the bank ignoring its technology issues. But further, it impacts its future revenue, especially from its highly lucrative credit cards business. The bank is the market leader in credit cards, with a 31.4% share by card spend, and its 3 month average (July-September) addition was 136,044 cards per month, which is the likely loss to the bank as rivals compete for these additional cards in the following months. In FY2020, 95% of customers initiated transactions via its digital (internet and mobile) channel and as on September 30, the bank had consolidated assets of US$ 225 bn. In December 2019, this analyst was one of the few to highlight the obvious deficiencies in HDFC Bank’s digital operations, the lack of clear and relevant communication to the public and to customers by the bank, and, most worryingly, the absence of a disaster recovery plan, which should have been taken up on a war footing by the bank’s board of directors.The RBI’s order specifies that the “Bank’s board examines the lapses and fixes accountability”, which indicates that in the past year the HDFC Bank’s high profile board of directors has not given this issue the importance it deserves by examining the cause for the failure of its digital operations, and the remedial actions to be adopted to prevent its recurrence; nor has it fixed accountability. A professional board would have given such a basic task high priority soon after the lengthy digital outages of last December. That it takes a humiliating public directive from the banking regulator to remind the HDFC Bank’s Board to do its job is indicative of the corporate governance practiced in India’s most valuable bank.

HDFC Bank’s Digital Irresponsibility: RBI’s Novel Penalty Hits Where It Hurts