Indian banks are likely to use fresh foreign-currency deposits mobilised from the Indian diaspora to replace expensive funding on their balance sheets before deploying the money into new lending, Axis Bank Chief Executive Officer Amitabh Chaudhry said, as lenders prepare to benefit from a recent Reserve Bank of India (RBI) policy move. "The first thing banks will do is reduce or pause growth in other very expensive deposits for some time," Chaudhry told Bloomberg in an interview. Indian lenders are leveraging the RBI's decision earlier this month to absorb the hedging costs incurred by banks raising dollars overseas, the report noted.