Mumbai, April 6 -- Getting customers to park their money in deposits remains a struggle for banks, as loan demand continues to race ahead of deposit growth. In the March quarter, HDFC Bank stood out as the sole lender to raise deposits faster than loans, a period when its peers struggled.

Early business updates from 19 banks, excluding small finance banks, showed that only a few managed to shrink the gap between loan and deposit growth. One of them was state-owned Bank of Baroda (BoB), which reported 12% growth in deposits and a 16.2% growth in loans, against 10.3% and 14.7% respectively in the December quarter.

At India's largest private sector lender HDFC Bank, deposits grew 14.4%, while loans expanded at 12% in Q4 of FY26, as against...