Q1-FY24 · Sumant Kathpalia
Our profit after tax grew by 4% quarter-on-quarter and 30% year-on-year to INR 2,124 crores.
IndusInd Bank · tone and specificity signals across the available quarters.
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Our profit after tax grew by 4% quarter-on-quarter and 30% year-on-year to INR 2,124 crores.
We have thus begun well on the '26 strategy execution, and are committed to the ambition laid down, outlined in our strategic plan.
Our cost of deposit, I think, you should see the peak out in Q2, and I think, what has happened in Q1 is a lot of maturities which have come in and which are contracted at a low, lower price, got repriced.
We should see growth coming back and I think we should be in the range of 18%-23% for the full year.
I think you will see some stress in the car business for next two quarters. Let me be candid.
The processes of Bharat Financial are so strong they're able to see early trends and exit those businesses and territories.
We have delivered without any prior period adjustments as committed in the last quarterly call.
We are targeting the upgrades and recovery run rate for the year to be comfortably better than the last couple of years.
We are not hesitating in cutting rates, and we do believe that there is further scope to cut both savings account as well as term deposit rates.
Our net interest margins remain steady at 4.29%. We continue to believe that the bank has enough levers to absorb any increase in cost of deposits within an ambition of 4.2%-4.3% net interest margin.
We launched our digital banking offer, INDIE, during the quarter. The offering was well received by the customers, and we already have over 1.8 million downloads and 400,000 customers.
Our credit cost has reduced to 123 basis points from 132 basis points quarter-on-quarter. We aim to close the year between 110-130 basis points.
We prioritized long-term sustainability over short-term earnings.
I created the contingent provision so that I could take care of any unforeseen probability which may come in my book or take care of the ECL as and when it comes.
I am very bullish on the microfinance segment, and I think you will see the stability coming in very soon.
I'm not in a great hurry to push the growth lever because I think it's important for us to first stabilize the platform before we are able to do that.
The core PPOP is actually stable on a QoQ basis. NIMs are broadly stable. The book is broadly stable. That should give confidence.
I think the first medium-term objective is to get to a 1% ROA, and I think that is what the aim will be.
We had some excellent achievements as well as some misses. On the positive, the retail deposit mobilization was one of the best in several quarters... On the miss, we saw slippages on the higher side than expected.
I don't want to give any guidance because I tell you, I missed my guidance this quarter on this.
We will never have a book of more than 55%-57% retail at any point of time.
We want to press the accelerator when 30-90 becomes within a range amount of 1%-1.2%. That's our objective.
I think the incremental stress in microfinance seems to be peaking out, as seen in the reducing forward flows from zero DPD customers.
We have already got put in our system that any new customer, we will not have BFIL Plus Two, and for an existing customer, maximum we'll allow one more lender.
Our intent is to bring down net NPA well below 1% in the 60-70 basis points vicinity over a period of time.
We are now writing off at 365 days post NPA. So that's one change that we made.
I think the challenge for us will certainly be to be able to improve the quality and quantity of liabilities as we go forward.
We continue to believe that the bank should grow at 18% to 22% because we operate in those segments otherwise we lose market share and we play in businesses where we have a right to win.
Deposits is not the issue. Please understand. Liquidity is not the issue anymore. It is about the cost of deposits.
We continue to believe these small-ticket loans should never be restructured. We should rather take them as losses and move forward.
The board suspects the occurrence of fraud against the bank and the involvement therein of certain employees having a significant role in the accounting and financial reporting of the bank.
We are starting financial year 2025-2026 on a clean and strong footing. The balance sheet continues to be robust with healthy capital adequacy, provision coverage, and liquidity levels.
The microfinance side, we have taken additional slippage this quarter... normalcy is maybe six months away.
Our focus this quarter was firmly on balance sheet resilience and asset quality repair.
These trends give us confidence that credit costs are past their peak, subject to macro stability and seasonality.
We believe AI, and particularly GenAI, represents a structural shift for banking comparable in scale, if not greater, than core banking transformations of the 2000s and the internet and mobile banking wave in 2010.