India's HDB Financial gets market regulator nod for IPO
MUMBAI/BENGALURU, June 3 (Reuters) - India's markets regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), has approved the initial public offering (IPO) of HDB Financial Services, marking the HDFC group's first public float in seven years.
According to a document published on the SEBI website on Tuesday, the regulator issued observations on the public listing, allowing the company to proceed with its IPO, a source with direct knowledge of the matter said.
SEBI and HDFC Bank (HDBK.NS), opens new tab did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
In October, HDB Financial filed for an IPO of up to 125 billion rupees ($1.5 billion).
HDFC Bank, which holds a 94.3% stake in the lender, will sell shares worth up to 100 billion rupees, while fresh shares worth up to 25 billion rupees will be issued.
HDB Financial's listing follows new norms introduced by the country's central bank in 2022 that require large non-banking financial companies to be listed on stock exchanges by September 2025.
For the quarter ended March 31, HDB Financial Services posted a profit of 5.3 billion rupees, while its net revenue came in at 26.2 billion rupees. The company's total loan book was 1.07 trillion rupees as of March-end.
($1 = 85.6540 Indian rupees)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
22 minutes ago
- Reuters
China's Didi Q1 revenue rises 8.5% as recovery gains pace
BEIJING, June 5 (Reuters) - Chinese ride-hailing company Didi Global reported an 8.5% rise in revenue in the first quarter of 2025 to 53.3 billion yuan ($7.42 billion) on Thursday, as its recovery from a regulatory overhaul of its operations gathered pace. The Beijing-based company reported net income of 2.4 billion yuan for the quarter, versus a loss of 1.4 billion yuan a year earlier, after adopting new accounting standards. Didi drew the attention of China's cyberspace regulator in 2021 over its pursuit of a U.S. initial public offering without approval, prompting an inquiry that prohibited it from adding users and saw many of its apps removed from stores. The regulator fined Didi $1.2 billion in July 2022 over a data security violation, before granting the company permission to relaunch its apps in early 2023. The company was delisted from the U.S. in 2022. Travel demand in China has shown signs of a recovery despite sluggish economic growth. Didi completed 3.3 billion transactions during the quarter, a 10.3% year-on-year rise across its platforms in China. ($1 = 7.1805 Chinese yuan renminbi)
Finextra
37 minutes ago
- Finextra
Will identity become the ultimate currency?
0 This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community. This is an excerpt from The Future of European Fintech 2025: A Money20/20 Special Edition. The meaning of the term 'Digital DNA' keeps changing as technology, especially in financial services, marches inexorably forward. What once might have literally meant how DNA (in genetic terms) is expressed in a digital format now encompasses many facets – ranging from human physical characteristics to unique identifying or verification information and even patterns in behaviour and actions observed in a system's users (or increasingly, by 'bots' - applications that are programmed to perform certain tasks, whether helpful or nefarious) while in communication with that system. Now, when we talk of digital identity in financial services, there's a growing list of ways financial institutions and their business and security partners verify clients' authenticity and authority. These might be deployed during interactions such as account opening, onboarding, transaction execution or screening, or any number of mundane or urgent (such as anti-money laundering detection) reporting applications. 'Positive' identification of financial systems players and providers is definitely not just about passwords and PINs anymore, but it's more important than ever. Tom Moore, head of financial services at Moore Kingston Smith, explained such identification methods used in the industry include 'advanced biometrics, such as facial and voice recognition,' and increasingly, behavioural biometrics as well. The latter might be described as observing and tracking the conditions, actions, and patterns surrounding a system user's activity on a system, including speed or key selection when typing, velocity, or direction of mouse travel when filling in forms or checking boxes, how touchscreen options are selected, and so forth. Julija Fescenko, head of marketing and communication for Magnetiq Bank, pointed out that emerging digital identity tools help fight what is a massive and growing fraud threat faced by the financial services industry and its customers. That's because fraudsters are becoming ever more adept at 'faking' identities, stealing information and access, and committing all sorts of crimes, schemes, and scams using similar technological tricks or tools to subvert legitimate use of financial systems. Fescenko believes biometrics and digital identity advances are likely to become 'essential for future financial access,' and even now, she said, they are demonstrating their worth in many areas, including 'making the onboarding process both seamless and secure.' 'Digital identity and biometric verification are more sophisticated, integrated, and user-centric than ever before,' added Moore. These and other emerging tools, he stated, have been 'seamlessly embedded into the UX,' to 'provide customers better control over their (user experience) and personal data.' Wendy Redshaw, chief digital information officer at NatWest Group, concurred. 'We see digital identity evolving through wider use of biometrics and the growth of decentralised identity models,' she said. Ahmed Badr, chief operating officer at GoCardless, hailed the growing usage and superiority of digital ID methods over traditional forms of authentication, and pointed to their speed and utility value for businesses as well. 'Biometrics,' he asserted, 'can accelerate tedious processes such as identity verification, reducing the burden on firms to repeatedly perform the same checks on individuals.' With all of the benefits that biometrics and digital identity innovations offer, Badr and his fellow experts in financial services also recognise these tools and techniques bring new compliance challenges. They point to specific concerns around EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and privacy requirements that must always be firmly embedded in the identity verification processes used by FIs and fintech firms. 'Biometric data, for example, is classified as 'special category' data,' Moore explained, 'which requires explicit consent and additional safeguards; so, businesses need to have strong data protection measures and more robust security' to meet regulatory requirements in this area. Fescenko also cautioned of the balance that must be maintained between innovation and privacy rights – citing GDPR regulations as well. NatWest's Redshaw said the bank ensures that all developments it undertakes 'align with our artificial intelligence and data ethics code of conduct, prioritising transparency, individual agency, and responsible data use.' Meanwhile, Badr asserted, one advantage of new identity verification tools is to simplify compliance, but it's not quite that simple: 'If done right, biometrics can make it easier to comply with GDPR. However, the growing use of sensitive biometric data raises concerns about possible misuse or breaches.' How can we build a harmonised digital identity amid conflicting regulations? As business expands further beyond local and national borders, questions are mounting about how to take identity verification to the next level – to unify its procedures and processes in an internationally-agreed, recognised, and practiced approach. Given the diverse regulatory environments involved, this is a daunting challenge. But it's doable, say our industry experts. Unification of international ID standards and verification procedures, Badr predicted, 'would be a massive help in fulfilling obligations to verify and carry out checks for Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter-Terrorist Financing (CTF).' An added benefit of implementing common ID verification standards regardless of nation or region is that it 'could significantly streamline processes and reduce inefficiencies for businesses operating across multiple jurisdictions.' But discussions and negotiations on these topics and the potential of harmonised identity verification regulations won't generate 'quick hits' either. Badr noted that it will likely take a lot of time and effort for regulators in multiple jurisdictions to reach consensus on how to proceed, and, as he put it, 'feel comfortable in unifying these systems,' due to not just their differences in national laws and priorities, but also 'significant concerns (among some) about the 'big brother state' implications and the potential for misuse of that information for other purposes.' NatWest's Redshaw expressed a similar affinity for common ID standards within her bank: 'We recognise the potential for a unifying identify verification system across borders to drive growth, enhance security, reduce fraud, and prevent identity theft.' Yet, those implementation challenges remain, she said, due to 'differing regulatory environments, national data standards, and varied approaches to privacy.' 'Any solution,' on cross-border ID verification, Redshaw stated, must not only ensure 'compliance, transparency, and trust,' but also needs to be aligned to AI and data ethics and codes of conduct. The path to take, and 'the key to realising the full benefits of a cross-border solution,' Redshaw asserted, is to harmonise these frameworks, 'while protecting individual rights and maintaining robust oversight.' Simplification of compliance and customer onboarding would be two key benefits of a unique cross-border identification system, agreed Magnetiq Bank's Fescenko. She reiterated, however, that the significant challenges of putting such a system in place can't be ignored: 'To achieve this, we must address data sovereignty, interoperability, and differing national regulations.' One workable framework, Fescenko suggested, could be a 'federated model, potentially based on European digital ID initiatives like eIDAS 2.0,' which 'could serve as a foundation for this system, supported by trusted public-private partnerships.' Moore is ultimately supportive of his banking and fintech counterparts' viewpoints, yet raised cautions on the realistic promise and outlook for common identity verification standards, especially as fraudsters continue to grow more creative and competent every day in 'breaking the rules' proposed standards attempt to establish. These new processes and regulations governing them can't simply be instituted on their own, he said, but must be rolled out and maintained as part of a coordinated approach internally within institutions and countries or regions as well as among the wider universe of extra-national institutions and regulatory bodies. They must also acknowledge that innovative and malevolent forces are lining up to try to defeat them in the marketplace. 'New threats such as deepfakes present a huge fraud risk for any businesses relying on biometric data, so measures such as continuous identity verification - constantly monitoring user behaviour, device health, and contextual risk factors to detect anomalies and revoke access if necessary - or liveness detection (how a system determines if any biometric is real, from a live person at the point of capture) need to be integrated.' These conditions, he said aren't optional, but essential for success of any coordinated ID verification initiative. Moore also noted that transaction friction can't be so impeded by any new ID checking standards that the pace or growth of commerce is unreasonably slowed either. 'There's got to be a balance […] if the fintech has overly restrictive systems it could impact the UX, while a lax system could lead to non-compliance or data breaches.' Moore agreed with his fellow experts in banking and fintech that 'decentralised identity models might allow more people to manage their digital identities without relying on a centralised authority, but fintechs using those models still have to comply with GDPR.' He emphasised: 'If they're processing the personal data of individuals within the EU or EEA. Privacy has got to be considered from the outset,' if proposed solutions to verify 'Digital DNA' are to succeed as the 'new currency' of ultimate security within the financial services world.
Finextra
an hour ago
- Finextra
Valantic FSA names Holger Wohlenberg as new CEO
valantic FSA, a leading provider of digital automation solutions for the financial industry, has appointed Dr. Holger Wohlenberg as Chief Executive Officer, effective June 1, 2025. 0 Dr. Wohlenberg brings extensive experience at the intersection of finance, technology and data, including senior leadership roles at Deutsche Börse Group, where he was instrumental in expanding the firm's proprietary data and technology businesses. This appointment underscores valantic FSA's next stage of development and growth as it further scales its presence and impact in Europe, and worldwide, supporting capital markets and financial services providers with effective end to end workflow automation and integration solutions for business-critical workflows. Dr. Wohlenberg succeeds Joachim Lauterbach who has decided to move on after ten years, having put valantic FSA firmly on the map as a multi-solution service provider with over 100 customers in 18 countries. 'I'm thrilled to join a team that combines deep industry expertise and powerful technology to deliver innovation and meaningful change in electronic trading and workflow automation.' said Holger Wohlenberg. 'I look forward to building on these strong foundations, working with the valantic FSA team, our clients, and our partners, to continue to make an impact in the delivery of mission-critical financial processes.' valantic FSA sits at the heart of digital transformation in financial services, delivering automation and integration solutions to banks, asset managers and capital markets infrastructure providers. Part of the valantic Group, valantic FSA is one of the fastest-growing financial technology solutions providers in Europe, supporting financial institutions and firms across the continent - and worldwide - to enhance the productivity of capital markets, electronic trading, payments and core banking workflows. Holger von Daniels, valantic Group CEO, commented: 'We're excited to welcome Holger Wohlenberg to valantic. His strategic insight and extensive experience scaling technology-led businesses will help drive the next phase of scale and growth at FSA. We would like to thank the outgoing CEO Joachim Lauterbach for his energy, leadership and vision in establishing strong foundations for our continuing success as a trusted partner in financial services automation.' Dr. Wohlenberg's appointment comes at a time of unprecedented demand from financial market participants for scalable, intelligent and interoperable digital solutions to manage increasingly complex operational, regulatory and customer engagement workflows.
