ICICI Bank, the country’s largest private sector lender, has charted out an ambitious plan to grow its mobile banking transactions by up to 500 per cent by the end of this financial year.

According to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data, in FY15, transactions worth Rs 16,000 crore were recorded via the bank’s mobile banking platform. Rajiv Sabharwal, executive director, ICICI Bank, explained the lender is optimistic about the growth plans, considering that in the first three months, the volume of transactions recorded on the mobile banking platform was equal to what the bank had recorded in the last financial year.

Mukesh Ambani, the richest Indian and Reliance Industries (RIL) chairman and MD, has not taken a pay hike for seven years, but his pay package is over 205 times that of the median employee remuneration at RIL. This ratio stands at 439 times in case of ITC Executive Chairman Y C Deveshar.

The ratio stands much lower at 89 times in case of information technology (IT) major Wipro Chairman and Managing Director Azim Premji, and at 19 times for HDFC Chairman Deepak Parekh for 2014-15.

HDFC Bank, the country’s second-largest private sector lender, has upped the focus on mobile banking transactions in the past few months as part of its strategy to transform itself into a digital bank. Now, the lender believes mobile banking will overtake internet banking by next year.

“Usage of mobiles has been growing rapidly and outpacing the growth of the internet transactions. We feel next by year it will overtake internet banking,” said Nitin Chugh, head-digital banking, HDFC Bank.

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), HDFC Bank and Dr Reddy’s Laboratories are the only three Indian firms to figure in Barclays’ top 111 stock picks from across the world for 2015.

In its ‘Global Top Picks’ report, Barclays has said more than six years into the recovery, the key drivers of the market rally u2013 low inflation, moderate growth and unprecedented monetary support u2013 are set to have a reduced impetus.

Leading private sector lender HDFC Bank has “exceeded” the single-borrower limits prescribed by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in case of its credit exposure to corporate giant Reliance Industries (RIL).

The bank, however, said its board of directors approved “the said excess in respect of this exposure” and it was within the 20 per cent ceiling of capital funds. The central bank has fixed the credit exposure ceiling of a bank at 15 per cent of capital funds in the case of a single borrower and at 40 per cent for a borrower group.

HDFC Bank has projected India's gross value added (GVA) to grow by 7.8 per cent in 2015-16 if the monsoon rain is better than projected by the weather department. And, 7.2 per cent if it is as scanty as predicted.

The GVA rose 7.2 per cent in 2014-15 and 6.6 per cent in 2013-14. It is not the same as gross domestic product (GDP). GDP is GVA plus indirect taxes.

The board of directors of HDFC Bank, second largest private lender, has extended managing director Aditya Puri's tenure for another five years, with effect from November 1.

Last September, the Reserve Bank of India raised the age limit of private bank chiefs to 70. Puri, 64, has headed the bank since its inception in 1994, the longest serving chief executive of an Indian bank.

After moving the retail end of the business to the mobile, HDFC Bank has started offering banking solutions on the go even for its wholesale banking customers. Customers can now use the mobile banking application for carrying out operations such as bank guarantee, letter of credit, remittances and bills processing, among others.

Bhavesh Zaveri, country head-operations and cash management product, HDFC Bank, said the idea behind launching Trade Finance on Mobile — a facility that will provide end-to-end digitisation of trade finance transactions, including last mile authorisation of these transactions — is to provide ease to customers and increase the speed of transactions.

HDFC Bank, the country’s second-largest private sector bank, has cut its base rate by 15 basis points (bps) to 9.70 per cent. The new rates came into effect on Monday. Base rate is the benchmark rate to which all loan rates are linked.

This is the second base rate cut in the last three months. In April, HDFC Bank had cut its base rate by 15 basis points to bring it down to 9.85 per cent.

MUMBAI: Some of the bulge-bracket global investors are betting on India's affordable housing story with the country's leading mortgage lender HDFC rolling out its $1-billion offshore fund to finance such projects.

The world's second largest sovereign wealth fund the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), is one of the investors, according to two persons close to the development.

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