The Reserve Bank's instruction to HDFC Bank for temporarily stop all launches of the Digital production activities and sourcing to new credit card customers ; called up by "credit negative for the lender", Moody's Investors Service , said on Monday.
According to Moody's Investors Service, the move about credit is negative alike the bank is increasingly rely on digital channels to source and providing services to its customers.
Moody's said , "The frequent outages also threat hurting the bank's brand sensitivity among a mounting digitally sense customer base, and increases the prospective that clients switch to other banks, which would lead to a reduction in returns and low-cost retail funding,".
"We do not anticipate the regulators' action to significantly affect the bank's active business and fiscal profile."Nevertheless, it pointed out that RBI's action will delay the launch of HDFC Bank's Digital 2.0 programme, under which the bank aims to merge all customers' digital connections, including payments, savings, investments, shopping, trade, insurance and advisory services, into single platform.
"This has the potential to increase expenditure to improve the bank's digital infrastructure, which would strain its profitability,"HDFC Bank, the second-largest bank in India by deposits, leads in terms of digital communication processed.In the fiscal year which ended in March 2020 (fiscal 2020), about 95 per cent of the bank's trade transactions were conducted digitally, up from about 85 per cent in fiscal 2018.On December 3rd, the lender had announced that the RBI asked the bank to stop temporarily all launches under its Digital 2.0 initiative and stop sourcing new credit card customers. The announcement came after the bank practised numerous outages in its E -banking, mobile banking and payment effectiveness services over the past two years.