HDFC Bank Limited (also known as HDB) is an Indian banking and financial services company headquartered in Mumbai. It is India's largest private sector bank by assets and world's fifth largest bank by market capitalisation , following its takeover of parent company HDFC. It is the third largest company(as of 6th September 2023) by market capitalisation of $150 billion on the Indian stock exchanges. It is also the sixteenth largest employer in India with nearly 1.73 lakh employees.
History
HDFC Bank was incorporated in 1994 as a subsidiary of the Housing Development Finance Corporation, with its registered office in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. Its first corporate office and a full-service branch at Sandoz House, Worli were inaugurated by the then Union Finance Minister, Manmohan Singh.
, the bank's distribution network was at 8,344 branches and 19,727 ATMs across 3,811 cities.It has installed 4,30,000 POS terminals and issued 2.35 crore (23.5 million) debit cards and 1.2 crore (12 million) credit cards in FY 2017. It has a base of 1,77,000 permanent employees as of 1 June 2023.
Products and services
HDFC Bank provides a number of products and services including wholesale banking, retail banking, treasury, auto loans, two-wheeler loans, personal loans, loans against property, consumer durable loan, lifestyle loan and credit cards. Along with this various digital products are Payzapp and SmartBUY.
Mergers and acquisitions
HDFC Bank merged with Times Bank in February 2000. This was the first merger of two private banks in the New Generation private sector banks category. Times Bank was established by Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd., commonly known as The Times Group, India's largest media conglomerate.
In 2008, Centurion Bank of Punjab (CBoP) was acquired by HDFC Bank. HDFC Bank's board approved the acquisition of CBoP for ₹9,510 crore in one of the largest mergers in the financial sector in India.
In 2021, the bank acquired a 9.99% stake in FERBINE, an entity promoted by Tata Group, to operate a Pan-India umbrella entity for retail payment systems, similar to the National Payments Corporation of India.
In September 2021, the bank partnered with Paytm to launch a range of credit cards powered by Visa.
On April 4, 2022, HDFC Bank announced a merger with the Housing Development Finance Corporation. Upon the completion of the merger, HDFC became the fourth-largest bank in the world by market capitalization. The effective date of the merger was set to be July 1, 2023. After the merger takes place, HDFC, a housing financing corporation, will transfer its home loan portfolio to HDFC Bank. Also, the bank is giving home financing company depositors the choice of either withdrawing their money or renewing their deposits with the private sector bank at the interest rate that the bank is currently offering.
Investments
In March 2020, Housing Development Finance Corporation, parent company of HDFC Bank, made an investment of ₹1,000 crore in Yes Bank. As per the scheme of reconstruction of Yes Bank, 75% of the total investment by the corporation would be locked in for three years. On 14 March, Yes Bank allotted 100 crore shares of the face value of ₹2 each for consideration of ₹10 per share (including ₹8 premium) to the corporation, aggregating to 7.97 percent of the post-issue equity share capital of Yes Bank.
Listings and shareholding
The equity shares of HDFC Bank are listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange of India. Its American depositary receipts are listed on the NYSE issued through JP Morgan Chase Bank.
Its global depository receipts (GDRs) were listed on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange but were terminated by the board of directors following its low trading volume.
Parivartan: Corporate social responsibility
Parivartan is an umbrella term for all of the corporate social responsibility initiatives by HDFC Bank.
HDFC Bank's Parivartan initiative spent ₹535 crore in FY 2019–20.
HDFC Bank spent ₹634.91 crore towards Parivartan,in FY 2020-21. Out of ₹634.9 crore, over ₹110 crore was allocated and utilised towards initiatives focused on COVID-19 relief.
HDFC Bank has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2032.
Controversies
On 2 December 2020, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) ordered HDFC Bank to temporarily halt the issuance of new credit cards and all planned activities under the bank's Digital 2.0 program citing incidents of outages in the bank's internet banking, mobile banking and payment utility services.