HDFC Bank's employee strength down by over 6,000; staff numbers dwindle for second consecutive quarter

HDFC Bank's staff strength has dwindled for a second consecutive quarter. The bank's staff numbers went down from 90,421 to 84,325 in the fourth quarter of the fiscal year ending in March 2017, the Economic Times (ET) reported on Friday.

Paresh Sukthankar, the bank's deputy managing director, told ET that the company hadn't replaced staff lost due to attrition, and had "rebalanced" its "capabilities due to the increase in digital transactions."

He also attributed the reduction in staff numbers to the relatively low number of branches the bank opened in the fiscal year, ET's report said.

HDFC bank's staff strength had fallen by 4,581 in the October-December quarter. Its headcount on September 30, 2016, was 95,002.

At the time, the bank - in an e-mailed response to the news agency PTI - attributed the reduction in employees to new efficiencies that required fewer staff to do the same job and lower hiring.

The drop in headcount was primarily a result of combination of natural attrition and a hiring at a clip lower than normal made possible by achieving higher productivity and efficiencies over the previous few months, the bank had said.

HDFC SHARES RISE BY OVER 2 PER CENT

Shares of HDFC Bank on Friday rose by over 2 per cent, adding Rs 8,918 crore to its market valuation, after the company reported an 18.2 per cent growth in net profit at Rs 3,990 crore for the March quarter.

The stock gained 2.38 per cent to end at Rs 1,496.75 on BSE. During the day, it rose by 2.60 per cent to Rs 1,500, its 52-week high level. On NSE, it jumped 2.35 per cent to close at Rs 1,496.60.

The company's market valuation rose by Rs 8,918.03 crore to Rs 3,83,549.03 crore. In terms of volume, 5.15 lakh shares of the company were traded on BSE and over 43 lakh shares changed hands on NSE during the day.

Bad loans provisioning rose sharply during the quarter to Rs 1,261 crore, up from Rs 662 crore in the January-March period of 2015-16, it said in a BSE filing.

Total income during the fourth quarter rose to Rs 21,560 crore, up from Rs 18,862 crore in the same quarter of the previous fiscal.

For the full 2016-17 fiscal, HDFC Bank reported a net profit of Rs 14,549 crore, a growth of 18.3 per cent over the previous financial year.

Gross non-performing assets (NPA) of the bank as a percentage of total advances rose to 1.05 per cent during the March quarter, from 0.94 per cent in the same quarter of 2015-16 fiscal.

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