RBI imposes $9 million penalty on ICICI Bank

(Reuters) - The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), in a rare move, imposed a penalty of 589 million rupees ($9.04 million) on ICICI Bank Ltd, the country's third biggest lender, for failure to adhere to held-to-maturity (HTM) guidelines.

The penalty is for non-compliance with directions issued by the Reserve Bank of India on direct sale of securities from its HTM portfolio and specified disclosure in this regard, the RBI said in a statement https://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/PressRelease/PDFs/PR25938AACA959D1DA45AAA28BC1E1169EF20A.PDF on Thursday.

The central bank did not elaborate on how ICICI Bank failed to comply with its norms.

Banks need to disclose the amount of securities they keep under the HTM segment under which the papers are held until maturity and cannot be used for intraday trading.

The RBI allows banks to sell securities from HTM subject to certain limits and disclosure rules.

($1 = 65.1500 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Vishal Sridhar in Bengaluru; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)