HDFC Bank has skyrocketed by nearly 7% on Tuesday after the lender's stock touched a new all-time high of Rs1578 per piece in Sensex's early deal. Investors cheered HDFC Bank after the lender informed that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has appointed an external IT firm to audit the bank's entire IT infrastructure after a series of outages.
At around 10.19 am, HDFC Bank stock has corrected and was trading at Rs1562.10 per piece up Rs84.90 or 5.75% on Sensex.
The stock was among the top gainers on exchanges.
Earlier today, HDFC Bank in its regulatory filing said, "RBI has appointed an external professional IT firm for carrying out a special audit of the entire IT infrastructure of the Bank under Section 30 (1‐B) of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949 (“the Act”), at the cost of the Bank under Section 30 (1‐C) of the Act."
"The Bank shall accordingly extend its cooperation to the external professional IT firm so appointed by RBI for conducting the special IT audit as above," HDFC Bank added.
This was concerning certain incidents of outages in the internet banking/ mobile banking/ payment utilities of the Bank over the past 2 years, including the recent outages in the Bank’s internet banking and payment system on November 21, 2020, due to a power failure in the primary data centre.
In early December 2020, RBI asks HDFC Bank to temporarily stop i) all launches of the Digital Business generating activities planned under its program ‐ Digital 2.0 (to be launched) and other proposed business generating IT applications and (ii) sourcing of new credit card customers. In addition, the Order states that the Bank’s Board examines the lapses and fixes accountability.