The Reserve Bank of India has ordered Kotak Mahindra Bank to stop onboarding new customers via digital channels and to pause issuing new credit cards because of failures with the lender's IT systems.
The RBI says examinations of Kotak Mahindra's systems in 2022 and 2023 raised issues which have still not been adequately addressed.
Says the central bank: "For two consecutive years, the bank was assessed to be deficient in its IT Risk and Information Security Governance."
The RBI says it found serious deficiencies and noncompliance in IT inventory management, patch and change management, user access management, vendor risk management, data security, and business continuity planning.
Kotak Mahindra - India's fourth largest private lender - says it has "taken measures to adopt new technology to strengthen its IT systems". Existing customer are not affected and new customers can visit branches for onboarding.
In 2020, the RBI took similar action against HDFC Bank, barring it from adding new credit card accounts or launching fresh digital banking products after a lengthy IT outage.