 "Illustration by Binay Sinha")
AU Small Finance Bank on Thursday reported a rise of over two-and-a-half times in its net profit to Rs 479 crore for the third quarter ended December 2020.
The lender had posted a net profit of Rs 190 crore in the corresponding quarter a year ago.
The total net income during the October-December 2020 period also jumped 94 per cent to Rs 1,297 crore from Rs 668 crore a year ago, AU Small Finance Bank said in a release.
Net interest income grew 25 per cent to Rs 633 crore.
For the nine-months ended December 2020, the net profit was up by 81 per cent to Rs 1,002 crore and the total net income grew 54 per cent to Rs 2,885 crore.
The lender said the strong performance has happened as growth has returned to normalcy.
Basis the normalised environment and re-emergence of growth, the bank is moving ahead with an annual performance appraisal (increments) for 2019-20 for all employees in this quarter. The bonus has already been paid out in the third quarter of 2020-21, said the lender.
Disbursements grew 34 per cent year-on-year during the December 2020 quarter, driven by growth in demand across most key segments, it said. Asset under management (AUM) was at Rs 33,222 crore, with growth of 11 per cent y-o-y and 9 per cent quarter-on-quarter. Retail AUM remains dominant at nearly 91 per cent.
The bank's gross non-performing assets (NPAs) stood at 1 per cent and net NPA at 0.2 per cent by the end of the December 2020 quarter. The provision coverage ratio (PCR) stood at 76 per cent.
AU Small Finance Bank said the demand has normalised in most segments during the December 2020 quarter, it is expected to be significantly better.
The bank, which expanded into 16 new locations including Bhubaneshwar, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Lucknow, said attractive merchant offers with larger partners like Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, Swiggy, Zomato and Dominos led to higher customer engagement and balances build-up.
It also entered into partnerships with Care Health Insurance and ICICI Prudential Life Insurance as part of the enhanced third-party product range.
On the digital footprint, the lender said it is available on all channels such as UPI, FASTag, Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS), and Aadhaar-enabled Payment System (AePS).
Over 1.6 crore transactions worth about Rs 6,000 crore were executed in October-December 2020 through the UPI platform, and Rs 172 crore worth of payments executed using the AePS platform, AU SFB said.
The bank's investment in the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is to further augment the digital banking journey, it said. AU Bank also participated in the equity raising process of NPCI to the maximum permissible limit, it added.
Sanjay Agarwal, MD and CEO, AU Small Finance Bank, said, "I believe the worst is behind us, things are going to get better now with the public vaccination in horizon."
He added that the lender is working on various digital properties to create a holistic digital bank.
Shares of AU Small Finance Bank on Thursday closed at Rs 869.45 apiece on the BSE, up 1.18 per cent.
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