HDFC Financial institution units bold goal for card issuance. 
Mumbai: India’s most respected lender HDFC Financial institution has set out an bold plan to greater than double month-to-month card issuance from September after the central financial institution lifted a brief ban imposed on HDFC in December, in response to a supply.
“The gross sales groups have been requested to fulfill a goal of issuing 500,000 playing cards a month beginning September for the subsequent few months,” mentioned the supply with direct data of the matter.
HDFC Financial institution, which in September 2020 had issued almost 200,000 playing cards, didn’t instantly reply to a request searching for remark.
The most recent goal is an enormous leap from a yr in the past however some analysts mentioned it was achievable given the variety of “legal responsibility” or financial savings accounts it has opened this yr. Financial savings account holders are usually bought bank cards and loans by lenders.
“Having added shut to three.65 million legal responsibility accounts from Jan 2021 to June 2021, it will possibly simply seize market share within the bank card house,” Macquarie mentioned in a analysis notice.
Earlier the financial institution mentioned in a regulatory submitting that India’s central financial institution had relaxed restrictions positioned on it final yr on issuing new bank cards, following outages within the financial institution’s digital fee providers.
The relief was welcomed inside the firm.
“All of the preparations and strategising that we’ve got put in place to ‘come again with a bang’ (on bank cards) will now be rolled out,” HDFC Financial institution Chief Government Sashidhar Jagdishan mentioned in an inside e-mail to workers, a duplicate of which was seen by Reuters.
“Within the coming months, we’ll aggressively go to the market with not simply our present suite of bank cards but additionally new choices within the type of co-brands and partnership,” Jagdishan mentioned within the e-mail.
With almost 15 million bank cards in subject, HDFC Financial institution is the most important lender within the phase with almost 24% market share. But over the past eight months friends akin to ICICI Financial institution and SBI Playing cards have gained floor.
As of June, ICICI Financial institution had 11 million bank cards, up from about 10 million in January.
“Lifting of RBI (Reserve Financial institution of India) restrictions earlier than the festive season augurs properly and we anticipate HDFC financial institution to show extra aggressive on bank cards over the subsequent few months,” brokerage Motilal Oswal mentioned.
HDFC Financial institution is the seventh most respected lender in Asia-Pacific with a market capitalisation of 8.37 trillion rupees ($112.7 billion).