The country’s largest private sector lender HDFC Bank expects credit growth of 17-18 per cent during the current financial year as there is substantial credit demand. Effective July 1, parent mortgage firm HDFC Ltd merged with its subsidiary HDFC Bank, making it the second largest lender after State Bank of India. The total advances of the bank grew by 15.8 per cent to Rs 16.15 lakh crore during the first quarter.
“Overall, we believe there is adequate loan demand. It is up to us to see which one we want and at what time we start manufacturing,” HDFC Bank Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Srinivasan Vaidyanathan said in a recent interaction with analysts. The bank will be selective in lending and will not participate in some loans, he said, adding “if the price is not to our liking, we don’t need it.”
Meanwhile, Keki Mistry, vice-chairman of the now merged entity HDFC Ltd, has become the most valuable independent director. The market capitalization of listed companies, including HDFC Bank, of which he is an independent director, is over Rs 27 lakh crore. Apart from HDFC Bank, Mistry is also on the board of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), HDF Life, Torrent Power and Flipkart, among others.
He is followed by former SBI chairman OP Bhatt; Chairman, Capacity Building Commission, Adil Zainulbhai; and former Central Vigilance Commissioner KV Chowdhary. On the distribution front, Vaidyanathan said, while the bank added 39 branches in the quarter, it added 1,482 branches in the last 12 months. Now the total number of branches is 7,860.
With regard to cards, he said, the bank has issued 1.5 million cards in the first quarter taking the total cards to 18.4 million. “Our website continues to drive heavy traffic. We received an average of 109 million visits per month, with over 89 million unique visitors during the quarter, a 42 percent year-over-year increase,” he added. The RBI had in December 2020 asked HDFC Bank to stop all launches of its upcoming digital business-generating activities and sourcing of new credit card customers after repeated outages at its data center affected operations. It was later withdrawn in March 2022.
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