After an outage at HDFC Bank's data centre which impacted their operations on Thursday 2 Dec 2020, the Reserve Bank of India has asked the private lender to stop all launches of its upcoming digital business-generating activities & sourcing of new credit card customers.
In a regulatory filing HDFC Bank said, “RBI has issued an order dated December 2, 2020, to HDFC Bank Ltd with regard to certain incidents of outages in the internet banking/ mobile banking/ payment utilities of the bank over the past two years, including the recent outages in the bank’s internet banking & payment system on November 21, 2020, due to a power failure in the primary data centre".
Further, the bank stated that RBI has advised them to to temporarily stop all launches of the digital business-generating activities planned under its program Digital 2.0 and all other business which require IT application including sourcing of New Credit Card Customers.
HDFC Bank also added that RBI order has given direction to the bank board to examine lapses and and fixes accountability and said that the above measures shall be considered for lifting upon satisfactory compliance with major critical observations as identified by RBI.
The Bank noted that “over the last two years, it has taken several measures to fortify its IT systems and will continue to work swiftly to close out the balance and would continue to engage with the regulator in this regard.”
It further added, "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 actions will have no impact on its existing credit cards, digital banking channels and existing operations. The bank believes that these measures will not materially impact its overall business."
