 "Chandra Shekhar Ghosh")
Bandhan Bank on Thursday reported a more than doubling of its March quarter net at Rs 323 crore from Rs 142 crore a year ago, on an expansion in core income and a reduction in expenditure.
The microlender-turned-universal bank reported a net profit of Rs 1,111 crore for 2016-17 as against an annualised Rs 500 crore in 2015-16, but the management clarified that it is not a comparable number.
The core net interest income moved up 50 per cent in the quarter to Rs 687 crore, mainly on a 51 per cent credit growth in the fiscal, while non-interest income grew to Rs 132 crore from Rs 82 crore.
The cost-to-income ratio improved drastically to 36.31 per cent from 56.89 per cent a year ago, helped by a reduction in operational expenses, which came down to Rs 289 crore from Rs 318 crore a year ago.
The legacy micro-finance segment still accounts for 91 per cent of its total loan book of Rs 23,543 crore, while the rest is in newer segments like small businesses, loan against property, personal loans and housing loans.
"Our focus is to cater to the unbanked sections and we've decided to devote more attention to the Rs 1-10 lakh loans to small businesses and affordable housing," chief executive and managing driector CS Ghosh told reporters.
He, however, did not give any targets on this, but maintained that the bank is aiming to grow both its deposits and advances by 30 per cent in fiscal 2018.
Total advances included Rs 7,000 crore in loans sold to competition struggling to meet the priority sector lending mandates, he said. The receivables from such loans have given a 1.50 per cent boost to the net interest margin, which came in at a high 10 per cent.
However, Ghosh said normalising for the interbank participation certificate transactions and the money spent in distribution, it would be around 5 per cent.
Turning into a bank has helped it reduce interest rates on micro-credit by 4 percentage points to over 18 percent, he said.
Bandhan plans to increase its total network to 1,000 branches in fiscal 2018 from the present 840 and employees to 30,000 from the 24,000 at present. It has been able to add 1.5 million customers through the branch network and the share of retail deposits stands at 79 per cent.
The share of the low cost current and saving accounts deposits rose to 29.43 per cent from 21 per cent.
Ghosh said there was no adverse impact of the note ban on the bank and the surge in bad assets to 0.38 per cent from 0.14 per cent was due to floods in the eastern states where it has a 65 per cent concentration.
The bank is well-capitalised at 26.36 per cent with the core tier I at 24.77 per cent, he said, adding the bank will adhere to the RBI-mandated plan of listing by August 2018, even though it has not yet made plans about it. The bank is also not keen to grow its network through any acquisition.
