Kotak Mahindra Bank Responds To RBI Curbs, Expects No Material Impact On Overall Business: All About It

The Kotak Mahindra Bank on Wednesday (24 April) said that the restrictions imposed on it by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will "not materially impact its overall business".

In a statement, the bank said that it has taken concrete steps to adopt new technologies to strengthen its IT systems and will continue to work with RBI to swiftly resolve balance issues at the earliest.

Further, the bank assured its existing customers of uninterrupted services, including credit card, mobile and net banking.

The lender further added that its branches will continue to onboard new customers, providing them with all the bank’s services, except issuance of new credit cards.

The statement from India's third-largest private lender by market capitalisation comes after the regulator clamped down on the bank, directing it to stop issuance of fresh credit cards and onboarding of new customers via online and mobile banking channels with immediate effect.

The regulator found lack in IT risk and information security governance for two consecutive years; in 2022 and 2023.

The RBI said that serious deficiencies and non-compliances were observed in Kotak Mahindra Bank in the areas of IT inventory management, patch and change management, user access management, vendor risk management, data security and data leak prevention strategy, business continuity and disaster recovery rigour and drill, etc.

"For two consecutive years, the bank was assessed to be deficient in its IT Risk and Information Security Governance, contrary to requirements under Regulatory guidelines," it said.

During the subsequent assessments, the bank was found to be significantly non-compliant with the Corrective Action Plans issued by the Reserve Bank for the years 2022 and 2023, as the compliances submitted by the bank were found to be either inadequate, incorrect or not sustained, the central bank said.

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