NEW DELHI: HDFC Bank has chalked out a plan to revamp its digital banking infrastructure even as it awaits guidance from RBI on the halt on sourcing of new credit card customers and digital launches on the back of frequent outages over the last few years.
“The recent outages were not related to capacity issues but were largely due to hardware or process failure. All the elements around the technology audit have been completed. We are awaiting further direction from the regulator,” said Ramesh Lakshminarayanan, Chief Information Officer, HDFC Bank.
The private lender expects IT spending to rise over the next 2-3 year as it is attempting to create a “digital factory”. HDFC Bank also plans to roll out multiple digital products in the next 15-24 months, once the ban is lifted.
It is working with many new-age fintech and technology partners and is looking to address customer facing areas, added Lakshminarayanan.
“Going into cloud-native stacks, building new tech talent, building the infrastructure skillset, the design aspects, all are very important. The management is clear that we will spend whatever it takes (to ramp up its digital banking),” he said.
The new project will take time to reach fruition since the bank will first have to convince the regulator that it indeed has the digital capabilities to serve existing customers to emerge from the ban.
The bank, which is revamping the existing infrastructure, said it can only work towards minimising challenges, not eliminate issues.
“I don’t think we will be able to stop all the outages from the existing side,” said Lakshminarayanan, adding that its spending on technology will be at par with global benchmarks.