‘Willbeaggressivetowinlostmktshare’
HDFC Bank CEO says lender will roll out plans put in place to come back with a bang
MUMBAI: HDFC Bank’s managing director (MD) and chief executive Sashidhar Jagdishan on Wednesday said the largest private sector will be aggressive and “come back with a bang” as it seeks to win back lost market share in the credit card segment.
“With the lifting of the restriction on cards acquisition, all the preparations and strategising that we have put in place to ‘come back with a bang’ will now be rolled out,” Jagdishan said in an email to its over 120,000 employees.
Conceding that the bank has lost customer market share in the over nine months of the ban, Jagdishan said it will go aggressively to the market with its existing products and also launch new ones in the form of co-brands and partnerships.
“I am confident that we will regain and grow our customer market share and revenue market share in the time to come.
We have the resources and plans in place to further reinforce our pole position in the credit card segment,” he said.
The RBI on Tuesday partially lifted the ban on issue of new credit cards imposed on the bank in December last year after repeated instances of technology outages but continued with the restrictions on the new launches on the digital front.
Interestingly, the assertion from HDFC Bank, considered one of the best in class on asset quality, comes at a time when concerns are being raised about the outlook on credit quality in unsecured lending business like credit cards.
The bank has started building an architecture that will ensure its systems bounce back quickly while ensuring minimal inconvenience to our customers in the case of a challenge, Jagdishan said, acknowledging that there can be issues with technology. Jagdishan expressed “gratitude” to the regulator for the relaxation and also thanked it for the “rap on the knuckles”.
“This rap has opened our eyes to the world of possibilities, re-imagine our IT systems & processes and turbo-charge the speed of technology transformation,” he said.
The bank is now truly on its way to enhance customer experience by harnessing the power of technology and digital, he said, acknowledging the efforts of the IT teams.
The bank will demonstrate the technology transformation that it has embarked on in the coming months and the agenda will help it drive ambitious future growth plans, he said.
“We will not just ‘run the bank’ but also ‘build the bank’ as we go ahead, riding on digital and enterprise factory with infrastructure scalability, disaster recovery resilience, enhanced monitoring capabilities and security enhancements as the key pillars,” he vowed.
On the restrictions on digital continuing, Jagdishan said the bank will continue to engage and ensure full compliance.
Jagdishan, who took over as the head of the bank just months before the ban in October 2020 from its founder-chief executive Aditya Puri, said the lender’s journey towards being a future ready organisation has “truly begun” now.
He asked the employees to keep in mind 3Cs of culture, conscience and customers as it goes ahead.
There are some “murmurs” of the bank having lost its mojo, the chief executive said, asking the employees to draw inspiration from Olympians to focus on the task for getting desired results.