Bank of Baroda Shares Opens Lower On Suspension of Employees Over Mobile App Row

Bank of Baroda (BoB) shares opened down on Thursday at Rs 202 per share and were trading with a negative gap of 0.17% at Rs 203.35 in the morning trades. The sell-off pressure was witnessed in the stock after public-sector lender Bank of Baroda (BoB) on Wednesday reportedly suspended its employees, including AGMs across the north region of the country including Gujrat and the suspension is a part of serious irregularities in bringing on fresh customers for its mobile banking app, bob World.

This new information heightens the existing investigation into the "bob World" issue, which started with claims that user accounts were linked to unauthorised mobile numbers. This came up when the Bank of Baroda opened an internal investigation into claims that some of its employees had improperly linked customer accounts with mobile phones in order to raise the number of active app users.

On October 10, Bank of Baroda was instructed to stop enrolling new customers to the "bob World" mobile application immediately by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

"Bank of Baroda should suspend, with immediate effect, any further onboarding of customers onto the BOB World mobile application. This action is based on certain material supervisory concerns observed in the manner of onboarding customers onto this mobile application," RBI said in a press release on October 10.

"While the bank has already carried out corrective measures to address the concerns of the RBI, we have initiated further steps to plug any remaining gaps identified and we will work closely with the RBI to address their concerns at the earliest to their satisfaction," Bank of Baroda had said after the RBI's announcement.