HDFC Bank CEO Comes Forward to Assuage Customers Post RBI's Action on Outages

The CEO of HDFC Bank, Sashidhar Jagdishan has assured existing clients of the bank that they could continue to transact with the bank without any concern. Sashidhar said that the bank will comply with the regulator’s diktat.

RBI on Thursday asked HDFC Bank to temporarily halt new digital offerings and stop sourcing credit card customers.

In a note to the customers, Sashidhar said, “Many of you may have read or heard about the RBI order asking us to temporarily stop any new digital banking launches and sourcing of new credit card customers. We will comply with the regulator’s requirements”. He further added, “We take this opportunity to assure our existing customers that there is no reason to worry. You can continue to transact with the Bank without any concern”.

Apologizing for the recent outages the bank has faced, Sashidhar further wrote, “We realize that as our valued customers, you expect us to maintain a very high standard of service quality and experience. And sometimes, we have not been able to live up to your expectations. For that, please accept our sincere apologies”.

The first big outage the bank faced was in November 2018 when it was upgrading its mobile application and internet banking. However, just the next year, in December 2019, it faced the second outage which forced the RBI to send its team to study the issues that the lender was facing. The bank has since then taken all necessary measures to strengthen its IT infrastructure and systems.
But despite all the actions, the Bank again faced an unexpected incident this November. The primary reason for the collapse was power outrage in its Primary Data Centre.

Sashidhar told his customers that they are working on war footing to strengthen this area also now. He also stated that the bank will launch some of its digital offerings

He also stated that some of the bank’s digital offerings will be launched once the regulator gets approval from RBI.
“Some of our strategic digital initiatives to improve the front end digital experience, improve digital origination, straight through processing, next generation of mobile and internet banking, APIs based banking on the edge etc would now be readied and launched post the approval and clearance from regulator,” he said.

Sashidhar assured customers that the bank will launch its digital offerings once the regulator gets approval from RBI. “Some of our strategic digital initiatives to improve the front end digital experience, improve digital origination, straight through processing, next generation of mobile and internet banking, APIs based banking on the edge and others would now be readied and launched post the approval and clearance from regulator,” he added while assuring customers that the Bank will work with the experts and regulator to fortify the identified areas for improvement.