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Informist, Monday, Sept. 7, 2026

 

NEW DELHI/MUMBAI – Banks Monday shifted their internet protocol addresses for the e-Kuber system for bidding at Reserve Bank of India-administered auction in line with the regulator's advisory from last week, according to four bankers aware of the matter. As the switch coincided with the RBI's variable rate reverse repo auction for 30 days Monday, it may have delayed the participation of some banks which had to switch to alternatives to bid, they said. 

 

"Our IT (information technology) team helped us immediately after there was an issue logging in to e-Kuber," a money market dealer at a private-sector bank said. "There were no issues with bidding through e-Kuber once we relogged in through the DR (disaster recovery) mechanism."  

 

 

The RBI had last week informed banks that the primary host for e-Kuber should be changed to a different address, which would be live from Monday, two bank treasury officials said. Most banks had not made the change until the first auction on Monday, which was the 30-day VRRR at 0930-1000 IST. The change was made quickly on banks' backend systems but initially caused some confusion among treasuries, the officials said.

 

The liquidity drain operation was for the longest tenure since January 2020 and comes after banking system surplus liquidity swelled to a record high of over INR 10 trillion, the most since the RBI started releasing the data in January 2019. It was keenly watched as a sign of banks' participation in the RBI's liquidity management after the weighted average call rate--the operating target of monetary policy--slipped below the Liquidity Adjustment Facility corridor.

 

The RBI accepted all offers worth INR 2.59 trillion at the INR-7.00-trillion, 30-day VRRR auction earlier in the day, in line with the median estimate in an Informist Poll. However, the subscription may be misleading due to the technical issues that banks were facing, dealers said. The RBI's provision of premature reversal of funds lent at the 30-day variable-rate reverse repo operation either wholly or partially could have led to a much higher subscription as it allowed banks complete operational flexibility while being assured excess cash had a return of nearly 5.25% rather than 5.00%, the Standing Deposit Facility rate.

 

"Ideally, banks should have gone to the 30-day VRRR but there were not a lot of bids (offers), maybe because the issue was happening," a money market dealer at another state-owned bank said. "Maybe one thing that is stopping banks, especially PSU banks, is that management can sometimes look down upon such an action (to exercise premature withdrawal), as it may draw RBI scrutiny."

 

With the technological change in place by banks in the morning, the second VRRR auction did not face any issues in participation, dealers said. The RBI accepted all bids for INR 3.53 trillion at the overnight, INR-5.00-trillion tender conducted at 1100-1130 IST.  End

 

Reported by Aaryan Khanna and Cassandra Carvalho

With inputs from Diksha Tripathy

Edited by Akul Nishant Akhoury

 

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