HDFC Bank’s Arm: HDB Financial Services Fires Several Employes Citing “Performance Issues’

The non-banking financial company (NBFC) arm of private sector lender HDFC Bank, HDB Financial Services Ltd has asked several employees across the country to quit during the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown, as informed by the employees who were told to leave.

What Does HDFC Say?

“It involves a minuscule number of employees out of the total over 1 lakh and has nothing to do with the ongoing lockdown or the resulting economic situation,” said a spokesperson for HDB Financial Services Ltd, in a statement on Sunday.

The statement said “This is to clarify and set the record straight with respect to certain posts pertaining to our subsidiary HDB Financial Services in social media and a section of the press,”. 

According to the company, this was an “attempt by a handful of disgruntled employees to take advantage of the current situation,” and the group takes “pride in being a responsible employer and will do nothing to let that pride diminish”.

What Does Employee Say?

Earlier, a clutch of HDB’s sacked employees took to Twitter about the treatment meted out to them. 

Although, the number of people who asked to leave are yet not identified.

The story gets interesting, as an earlier statement from the company had said, the information was “grossly incorrect” and “there have been no termination notices issued.”

While a 28-year-old operations executive from Noida said he received a call from his superior and from the human resources department on 7 May informing him that he need not come to office from the next day.

Further, the employee from Noida said, “I was in office when I received a call and that was the end of my employment. HR told me that my performance was not satisfactory. However, I had four branches under me which were performing quite well. I was told that I would get two months of salary along with my full and final settlement,”.

In another development, an employee from Vadodara said that he and 14 other people of his branch were sacked on 8 May via a WhatsApp message on their internal group.

This employee from Vadodara was a senior sales executive at HDB and said the company attributed no reason to this decision.

the senior sales executive, quoted above asked “Where will I find a job now that everything is shut?”.

In another case, a 33-year-old employee from Lucknow said he was a senior sales manager and was an employee for over two years, until he was sacked on a phone call on 5 May.

The employee from Lucknow said “I was told it was a performance issue which I choose not to believe as I was promoted twice in the last two years. We were working from home during this lockdown and I got a call from my superior and HR who said I have lost my job. It was all so sudden that I did not get time to react and do not know where to look for a job,”.

Why Would This Happen?

Basically, the lender offers secured and unsecured loans to customers.

According to its website, it has more than 1,400 branches spread across 24 states and three union territories.

But the sudden state of unemployment amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has put them in a spot. 

The HDFC Bank held 95.3% stake in HDB Financial Services Ltd as of 31 March. 

Further, they reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 7,280 crores in the March quarter of FY20, up 15.5% on a year-on-year (y-o-y) basis. 

Also, the non-bank financier’s consolidated advances grew 20.1% to ?1.04 trillion in Q4 FY20.