Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and Welcome to the Kotak Mahindra Bank's Q2 FY 2022 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Uday Kotak. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you very much, and, good evening to all my analysts and investors, friends and colleagues. As we come to a crucial 18 months in the post-COVID era, it is at this stage it clearly looks like we are moving from a pandemic to an endemic, something which, all of us as human beings are beginning to deal with and accept more and more as a part of our regular lives. We are also seeing that as a very significant change across, many of us. Just as an example, we are doing this in the conference room here with my team here, in a physical meeting after quite some time. We are adjusting to what I would call as the new next normal or never normal, whichever way we want to define our present and future to be.
As we make this change, the big question around us is global macro and domestic macro in terms of how we see the way forward. Looks like, on the global side, we are coming towards the end of the very, very easy money policy with, the beginning of potential taper by the Federal Reserve System, between now and the next conference call as things look today, and, a gradual increase, in interest rates sometime in 2022, calendar. On the Indian side too, the bond yields have begun to move up, and in the last 20-30 days, there has been a reasonable movement in the bond yields from the short end to the long end.
The short end, of course, you've seen the one-year treasury bill move up by 20-25 basis points in the last few weeks. As also the 10-year, which is now around the 6.35% range, again, a movement of 15 basis points. It's believed that this will be a gradual but very steady increase, not anything dramatic. With a macro situation which is still growth oriented, some of the commodity prices like oil going up, I would still be of the view that economic growth is very much on. Indian recovery, as I look at on the economic side, has been significantly faster than what any of us would have imagined in May or June.
I am keeping my fingers crossed that this festival season we are able to manage without any significant damage of what is a worry of a potential COVID 3.0. However, with this good backdrop of a turning economy, I would just like to turn my focus to Kotak. When I look at Kotak in the 18-month period starting March-April 2020 into September 2021, I see a, on reflection, our approach at the early stage of the pandemic was that of an event we had never seen before and probably we were seeing for the first time in our lives, which is true. And therefore an unknown unknown, and we did turn cautious in the early stage of the COVID cycle.
The first six months post the pandemic coming in, which is April to September period, was a period where we at Kotak had moved into significant caution on the asset side, including on unsecured retail. Coming October last year, we began to feel more confident, but were still wanting to move in the area of secured loans and secured assets, and still cautious about unsecured consumer retail in view of the potential risks out of the pandemic and the risks cost and the stress costs coming out of that. That was the first product which we started growing more aggressively in the months of November, December, was home loans. We did take a position reasonably aggressively on the price of home loans. As we started gaining more confidence, we also took a decision to significantly up our game on hiring.
Around January, February, we took a call that we will start hiring significantly, combined with being a little more open at that stage, even on unsecured retail. As we started gathering that courage, we saw the beginnings of COVID 2.0 in April and May, which again put us, in a way, some spanner in the works as we were going down the path. The big difference between COVID 1.0 And COVID 2.0 is we did not stop our desire to start hiring. If you look at the speed at which we have added employees, we have added nearly 10,000 employees in about a year's time.
Mm-hmm.
In the last quarter itself, that is July to September quarter, we've added at the bank alone about close to 4,000 employees. Our acquisition engine for people, a decision which we took sometime in January, February, which we should have implemented more by around May, June, but got delayed because of COVID 2.0, started coming on board in July, August 2021. We have continued with that significant focus on building capability, building our engine, and getting our growth engine revved up. Fortunately for us this time around, the growth has come back in the economy in July, August, September, and we were in a much better position than in the last 18 months of the cycle.
We came around August and September, more in the second half of August into September, we began to see our advances and growth looking better. As a result of this, I am happy to come back to you and say that our quarter-on-quarter growth in advances at the bank has been about 8%. If I add credit substitutes, which is credit investment instruments, our quarterly growth is about 9%, which on an annualized basis turns close to 36% of course, of a lower base from last year. We are seeing our growth engine, particularly in August, September, and into the festive season, begin to show significant traction, more than we have seen probably in the last couple of years.
Because if you would recollect, we had slowed down our growth engine, particularly on secured retail, even before the COVID pandemic. Therefore, we come into this with greater capacity, with a significant ability to grow off a relatively small base of our bank. We also come on the back of a significantly higher confidence in the quality of our existing book, whether restructured or not. On that, I'm happy to share with you that our restructured loans, which includes COVID 1.0, COVID 2.0, and also MSME, all three put together, is a total of 54 basis points or 0.54% of our entire loan book.
Obvious consequence of this is that anything other than this restructured book has obviously been reflected in our NPL book, with the obvious implication on interest income, because the moment it goes into the NPA bucket, it hurts the interest income line because of IBR reversal. The other redeeming thing which we are seeing in our book, and of course it is a much smaller historical unsecured retail book, is our credit costs are running at max to around 63 basis points, and we see the overall existing book, including the credit costs, in very good control. We have all this credit cost and the restructured book includes our entire EPSDS book as well, and I just wanted to share this with all of you.
Therefore, we come into this with an August, September, which is showing us significant muscle on the growth engine on the loan side and the asset side. Therefore, coming into this with the confidence of a very solid, high quality, low credit cost and a low risk, relatively low restructured book, combined with a very strong liability franchise, which we are now nearly close to 61% on current and savings account. Our current account engine has fired extremely well. It's grown from the, between the 30%-35% range over the year and is continuing to fire pretty well. We are looking at ways and means to further push our savings deposit engine. But keep in mind, through this period, we have sharply dropped our savings deposits rate, although we are still higher than some of the other banks on that.
We do believe that with some frictions coming out of this drop, we now see an ability to be pushing our savings deposit engine also faster as we go forward. Therefore, if I look at overall the asset and the liability side, the asset side engine is revving up. We are sitting with significant liquidity. If you look at our LCR ratios, they are about 150%. Therefore, we have a lot of room with surplus liquidity on our balance sheet. The asset engine has just begun to crank up in the last couple of months. Our liability engine on an extremely strong foundation, and we believe it will continue to grow. This is the overall situation with reference to the bank and its asset and liability position.
At the same time, we are also very enthused with our many engines on the capital markets side. We've had a really remarkable period, and we continue to run with a very strong pipeline on our equity capital markets business, being able to really work for some of the finest companies coming into the market, and that engine is continuing to work in the third and the fourth quarter of the current year. Similarly, our both retail and institutional equities engine, the franchise is also gaining strength and some market share. Our wealth management business is getting new customers and deepening the franchise. Of course, our asset management business has also shown a good growth on AUM as we go forward.
Therefore, all the businesses around the market side also, and what are called linked to investments are also working are in a very robust position. On the insurance side, we were the first to recognize the problems coming out of COVID 2.0, recognize it in our June quarter. We are now seeing normalization of that begin to happen in the September quarter. We genuinely believe we are adequately provided on the life risk side as we go forward. Therefore, when I look at the situation, I would like to believe that the unknown unknowns of the pandemic, which is what we started with 18 months ago, started gradually getting our arms around risk and return to a position which we are today.
There is reasonably greater confidence in our team here to now even further push the growth engine from the time, as I said, August, September onwards, which we have seen continuing to, at the same time, build the franchise, the brand, and go out there and grow our customer business at the same time. I'm also happy to report that we have closed two transactions which we think are strategically important. One is buying the portfolio of Volkswagen Finance, demonstrating our openness to go out there and acquire stuff which makes sense for us and creates value for us.
We also made an investment in KFin Technologies, which is another just below 10% investment because we believe some of those spaces, both in the financial infrastructure space and consumer tech space, are spaces which we continue to be excited about. We believe we have a very strong capital position to be getting bolder as we go forward on a sensible basis, without hubris. I just feel we are at a good point in this time and look forward to a period of more stable and sustained growth, and genuinely hope that we don't have any surprises coming in from the COVID pandemic turning into an endemic. With that, I'll request my colleague, Jaimin Bhatt, to take the presentation forward. Thank you.
Sure. Thank you, Uday Kotak. Let me just take you through the bank's standalone numbers first. For this quarter, which is July-September 2021, we closed with a core tax profit of INR 2,032 crore, which is compared to INR 1,633 crore in the first quarter this year. Our net interest income is at INR 4,021 crore, which compares with what we did the same period last year at INR 3,897 crore. While we talk about the fact that we've had an advances growth during this period, which is on a YoY basis of 14.7%, we've seen a lot of the growth in this quarter, which has come during almost towards the end of the quarter.
In addition, of course, while the advances have grown up, the investment portfolio has actually declined on year-on-year basis. To that extent, that's impacted. Also importantly, we've seen the growth of the advances happening in areas which are mortgages and secured activities which are lower yielding. To that extent, that's been impacting the NIM. The fees and distribution income during this period, we've seen a robust growth, which we posted this period at INR 1,419 crores. That income has happened both on the distribution area as well as on the general banking. Distribution helped not just by the regular fees in the insurance segment, but we've also had a very sharp rise in the syndication fee which we've posted in this quarter.
The general banking fees comprising the regular activity on service charges on loans, on credit card related and other areas have continued to grow well and we saw a 25% growth on a year-on-year basis there. On the overall cost of the employee cost, we ended this period at INR 1,177 crores as against INR 999 crores last year. Last year, of course, we had taken some small cuts and to that extent, which was restored thereafter. As we put a note in the accounts tax part, we've taken a small hit on the PF related costs in this quarter. Non-employee operating expenses, we closed at INR 1,536 crores last year, in this quarter.
Last year, the same period was a subdued period where activity levels had dropped significantly. To that extent, the last year costs were INR 4,650 crores. This quarter we've also seen expenses growing in areas which are investment related. A lot of the areas like prepaid card-related costs, brokerage expenses or acquisition costs have gone up. The marketing and advertisement area is another area where we've seen costs going up and recovery related areas which have gone up. If I look at a two-year period, which is the same period for FY 2020, the operating expenses has actually seen a growth of about 15% year-over-year. Our provision for this quarter, we've taken a total of INR 420.24 crores, which includes INR 385 crores in advances.
The large part of the investment provision is on account of investment which we acquired with settlement of debt itself. On asset quality, the gross non-performing assets overall, we've seen drop in the quarter from INR 7,932 crore to INR 7,658 crore, which will take the GNPA from 3.56% as of June to 3.19%. The net NPA we closed at 1.06% in September as against 1.28% a quarter ago. Our slippages during this quarter have been at the gross level at INR 1,293 crore, but we've actually seen recovery and upgrades which are higher than that during this quarter.
As Uday mentioned, our restructuring on the COVID-related stuff, we are total both under COVID 1.0 And COVID 2.0. The total restructuring is at 0.21%. Our restructuring under the MSME segment is another 0.33% of our overall advances. The credit cost at 63 basis points for the quarter and against 49 basis points in quarter one at 180 basis points. SMA-2 continuing to be low at INR 388 crore as of September 30, which is those borrowers outstanding with more than INR 5 crore. We continue to have no sales to the ARCs during this quarter. Our balance sheet overall grown by INR 4 lakh per month.
As Uday mentioned, our LCR average for this quarter at 153%. Capital adequacy continuing to be extremely strong. We closed at 23.1% overall with a Tier 1 of 22.1%. As Uday mentioned, this is on the back of robust growth on the advances side at 14.7% for year and 8% quarter-over-quarter. Our capital and reserves at the end of the quarter at the bank standalone at INR 67,000 crores with a CASA of 60.6%. I request Shanti to take up some of the digital progress which we have made.
Thank you, Jaimin. I will start with our digital strategy and initiatives. Our digital strategy continues to be centered around our customers. Last time I covered our digital acquisition and engagement strategies across our platform of saving, lending, payment, investment protection powered by AI and ML. This continues even during this quarter. We continue to invest in and enhancing our technology stack and platform, which is the backbone of our digital strategy. We continue building scalability, agility and resilience in our core tech infrastructure, including cloud for agility. In the application side, we have upgraded platforms to be able to offer new features and customized solutions, thus enhancing the whole experience for our customers. In the digital channels, we continue to revamp our DIY, STP and automation journey, providing a seamless, frictionless and convenient ability for our customers to transact.
This investment in our technology stack will be a continuous journey and will be the base for our digital strategy. Mobile first has always been a key strategy. The last two years we upgraded our mobile app significantly by providing customers more functionalities and greater choice across banking, payments, loans, cards, investment and insurance. By integrating shopping and lifestyle, we are now well into the journey to be a super app. Our customer-centric experience and functionality has allowed us to be consistently amongst the top-rated banking apps in both iOS and Android. Mobile transaction volumes have shown 138% YoY growth. UPI transactions, both C2C and merchants, has almost tripled to 9x YoY over this quarter.
The app enables the customer to borrow 50+ financial products and loan products and provide a wide range of payment products including QR, BillPay, Recharge, etc. To the key feature of pay your contact which we launched last quarter, we have added the ability to send gifts to your contacts and this has been well received. Pay your contact has seen rapid adoption with about 3.8x transactions in September vs June. The shopping mall within the app, KayMall, offers 14 categories of e-commerce to customers with 15 live merchants. We added some more in Q2. This is a focused area and we will add many merchants over the upcoming quarter. E-com transactions inside KayMall grew 1.7x QOQ. The shopping in the grocery category actually doubled QOQ.
We are aiming to serve our customers in vernacular languages and digital and enable the top four used features in Hindi in our app this quarter. We are working towards Mobile 2.0, which is a state-of-the-art mobile platform and experience and our vision of a super app. Mobile 2.0 aims to personalize and customize the banking experience for customers. Users will be able to have full control to customize the app to suit their requirements. The app will be built for scale using new age cloud-native technologies without compromising on security. Even non-Kotak customers will be able to use the app without opening an account for everyday payments, bill payments and shopping ecosystem. The strategy on ecosystems is in three parts, operate, partner, partnerships. I already talked about the KayMall, which is operate our own ecosystem.
We are building ecosystems for investment and insurance, which will be launched in the upcoming quarter. We have a rapidly expanding fintech partnership network, and we keep experimenting on use cases and business models. The connected banking partnership allows us to put banking within the platforms of select partners, and the initial uptake is promising. We plan to leverage regulatory network of account aggregator and open for retail and MSME lending in the upcoming quarter. Retail assets. We have been building mobile-first end-to-end customer digital journey across retail asset products, including home loans, credit cards, personal loans, MSME. This will significantly enhance our retail assets customer experience layer, engagement and friction-free delivery of products and services. This is across all our categories of customers, NTB existing and customers through partnerships, both DIY and assisted journeys.
All of this will go live in a phased manner across Q3 and Q4 of this fiscal. We launched WhatsApp as a service channel for various asset products in Q2 and have seen a significant uptick in usage. Merchants acquisition. A new key focus area for Kotak. This business model has been changing given the multitude of payment options, growth in digital transactions, growth in UPI and C2M. We embarked on the path of delivering a complete bouquet of free services with the launch of our merchant app, Kotak.biz in Q2. Kotak.biz app helps us onboard merchants for payment collection services digitally, serves them digitally and delivers targeted offers and multiple banking and value-added services. We are upgrading our acquiring and payment collection engine, which is the core of the merchant strategy and committed to delivering best-in-class services to merchants.
We intend to scale the business, including through partnerships. We have partnered recently with Pine Labs for leveraging their existing network of merchants as well as new acquisitions. Corporate Banking stack. We upgraded our transaction banking tech stack towards transforming customer experience in trade and cash management products. We introduced many features which are industry first. Our aim is to provide a superior digital experience and enhance market share across non-individual customer categories. Some highlights. We launched a paperless end-to-end seamless trade portal. Customers can do many things and transact digitally through it. A WhatsApp bot with a three-click single window payment experience, which is an industry first. Payments plus PMS solution for HNI savings first in, which is again a first in the industry. We have a pipeline of upcoming initiatives which will be launched in the next two transactions. Digital transaction highlights.
Mobile will continue to be our key strategy and drive transactions digitally as well. 97% of savings volume transactions were in digital or non-branch mode. Now to deposits and lending. As Uday said, this quarter saw a return to normalcy right across markets, acquisitions, products and transactions. Our average savings deposits growth YTD YoY is 11% and current account 32%. Sweep term deposits, 22%. The focus continues on granular customer growth across digital and physical channels, and 811 continued to contribute significantly to our digital customer acquisition. The bank had 28.5 million transactions as of September 30. Our CASA ratio was at 60 point-
Customers.
Yeah. 28.5 million customers. Yeah. Our CASA ratio was at 60.6% as of September 2021 vs 57.1% in Q2 last year. CASA and CD below INR 5 crores comprised 90% of deposits vs 91% in Q2 last year. Sweep deposits were at 8.3% vs 7.7% in Q2 last year, and the cost of savings is at 3.69% this quarter vs 3.87% in Q2 last year. Our asset growth in Q2 was strong across retail asset products led by home loans, LAP, working capital, business banking, personal loans, credit cards and consumer durables. Fee income showed good growth across insurance, investments and brokerage. We have increased our market share in issuance of FASTag to 7% for September 2021 on a monthly incremental basis.
We are happy to share with you that we are the first bank to receive an approval for income tax, GST and central excise, which means direct and indirect taxes mandate after the opening of agency banks by GOI. In October, we've also received approval for the pension business for all central government employees. We are working on integrating our tech platforms and will be making changes soon. Now to lending. Consumption loans saw a good uptick in the quarter. All our retail lending products showed robust growth in volume and SOH in quarter two. This helped us gain market share in many products. At a consumer asset aggregate level, we grew 20% YoY and 10% quarter on quarter. Mortgages. We are at our best ever quarter on fresh volumes for both home loan and LAP.
Like Uday mentioned, we launched a price leadership campaign for a limited period of 6.5%. This has helped us acquire quality customers, strengthen our market share and widen our distribution. This will be a focus area. Personal loans. We had a strong quarter on volume, with September being an all-time high. We see stabilization of risk in this space and have scaled up our new customer acquisition, both in traditional and data-led digital space. Cards. We saw a strong momentum in card spend last year, making it one of our best quarters. We have stepped up our investments in marketing alliances and attractive offers across e-com and physical partners. We are likely headed for one of our best months in card acquisition in October on the back of our upgraded tech stack.
We announced and have entered into a co-brand partnership with IndiGo, the market leader in aviation. With travel coming back, we hope to leverage this partnership significantly for our cards business. Consumer finance, one of the best quarters, thanks to strong demand across physical and digital distribution and our tech stack. We intend to scale in this space through relationships with key partners and a strong data-led digital business. Working capital and business banking. The segment saw an increase in sales demand due to better business volumes and expansion of capacity, aided by strong new client acquisition as well. Portfolio quality is holding well and better than pre-COVID. 85% of the book qualifies for CPS. Our focus remains growth by expanding distribution footprint, multiple and deeper channels, and technology enabling this. We launched healthcare financing in this quarter. This is a growing segment and we see multiple opportunities here.
Collections. Our key metrics are back to pre-COVID levels, and in some cases even lower. During this quarter, we launched a fully digital DIY collections platform. This enables low-risk delinquent customers to pay their missed installments in a non-intrusive manner. Apart from being customer-friendly, this platform would also help us bring down our collection costs in the early bucket. We continue to invest in technology, analytics, and capacity enhancements to grow our consumer assets. I now request Kannan to take you through the bank business highlights.
Thank you, Shanti. Kannan, over to you.
Thank you, Shanti. Commercial vehicle sales improved during the quarter as compared to the previous quarter, and so was the demand for CV finance, commercial vehicle finance. Deployment of vehicles and capacity utilization of vehicles were better during the quarter. Load availability is also improving. However, increasing diesel prices continue to impact the viability of the operators. Collection efficiency and demand have improved during the quarter and is as good as normal times. Intercity passenger transportation as well as tours and travels are showing early signs of improvement, though the school bus segment continues to be impacted. Demand for construction equipment finance continues to be good, mainly driven by government and mining contracts. The end of the monsoon season should lead to improvement in the deployment of equipment and better cash flows for equipment owners.
Collection efficiency again here during the quarter has been good and is back to normal times. Demand for tractor finance has been good, helped by another year of good monsoons. A good harvest is expected to ensure robust cash flows in the rural agricultural markets. Collection efficiency during the quarter for tractor finance has been much better than the previous quarter. In the Agri SME segment, demand for credit has been good, aided by good monsoon and stable Agri commodity prices. Collection environment has improved and collection efficiency on demand is back to normal times. Microfinance disbursements and collections have shown an improvement over the previous quarter. Collection efficiency on demand has shown marked improvement as compared to the previous quarter and is almost close to normal times. I now hand it over to Manian to take it forward.
Thank you, Kannan. I'll just take you through the Corporate Banking segment. As you can see, we've been talking about Corporate Banking and SME as separate sub-segments within the Corporate segment. If I look at Corporate Banking, I would draw your attention to the credit substitutes at the bottom of that table. If you look at the combination of Corporate Banking and credit substitutes, on a YoY basis, it has grown at about 17.5%, and the QOQ number is close to 11%. If you look at the SME business on a YoY basis, it has grown at about 24%, and on a QOQ basis it has grown at 8%. We are seeing good demand and our ability to price has been good through this period.
We have seen reasonable traction in both the SME side as well as the Corporate Banking side on the asset side of the business. More importantly, I think wholesale part of the business has been quite wholesale. We have seen very robust growth in our fee lines as well. DCM has been a triple digit growth. FX has been quite strong. Our transaction banking business has been quite robust through this period. Both our custody business has been extremely strong during this period, and current account other than custody has been remarkably robust.
Of course, the transaction banking business has been driven by significant investments we are making in our digital and, like Shanti mentioned a while back, there are several first-in-the-industry products we've been able to launch, and we are seeing significant traction in the transaction banking business. Of course, the spreads towards the later part of the quarter were slightly under pressure, but with interest rates rising, I think while we'll see some pressure on spreads, I think in the ultimate analysis will give us better ability to price. The pricing power will get better. Broadly we've been able to maintain spreads in the business through the year and,
Through the quarter as well. The asset quality has held up quite well. Actually, almost negligible slippages and both in the SME as well as in the Corporate segment. In fact, even in the SME business, I can probably count the number of accounts in one hand. So the credit costs have remained extremely good and the costs have remained good. Overall costs have remained good. A good mix of fee as well as asset income has ensured that we have maintained a healthy after-tax return on equity on the business, as is always our focus. I will now hand over this to Jaimin to take it from here. Thank you.
Thank you, Manian. Let me take the quick one on the consolidated numbers.
This quarter we closed the consolidated profits at INR 2,989 crores, which is a tad higher than what we did in the same period last year, which was INR 2,947 crores. Of course, significantly better than what we did in the previous quarter, which we had clocked at INR 1,806 crores. We talked about the bank closing the quarter at INR 2,032 crores. The non-bank activities therefore has brought in 32% of our post-tax consolidated numbers for this quarter. This quarter has seen the two capital markets activities, Kotak Securities and Kotak Capital, record profits. Kotak Securities closed the quarter at INR 243 crores of post-tax profits, while the investment bank had INR 58 crores of post-tax profits.
Kotak Prime, on the back of good recoveries, has brought in INR 240 crores of post-tax profit for this quarter. The other NBFC, Kotak Mahindra Investments, coming up with INR 89 crores of post-tax profits. The Life Insurance company which had a negative number in the first quarter, thanks to increase in claims, has got to a profit of INR 155 crores for this quarter. Though it's lower than the previous period, it has got into a positive zone compared to what it was in the previous quarter. The mutual fund entity is getting a total contribution of just below INR 100 crores for this quarter. We've got the overall advances at the group level also going up by 14% and, for the quarter at 8%.
Our total capital at the group level now at INR 89,600 crore. We've added capital to some of our businesses which required that, which included the general insurance company, the alternate assets as well as our pension fund activity. We now have a book value of about INR 449 crore, INR 449 per share. I request Gangadharan to take up the Life Insurance.
Yeah. Thanks, Jaimin. For Life Insurance this quarter, gross written premium grew by 21.4%. New business overall industry growth of 5.6%. Most importantly, overall our claim experience in this quarter was in line with the excess mortality which we provided at the end of Q1. In terms of our experience on...
In terms of our experience in credit business, credit term business, individual mortality risk business, the individual and the group term businesses, the experience has been completely developed, so we don't have any provision relating to that. But in terms of our credit term business, still due to delay in reporting claims, we have to carry some provision, which we believe we are adequately provided. In case of our AUM, we have grown by 31.3%. Our profit for the quarter was INR 155 crore against INR 171 crore last year. Our solvency ratio continues to be strong at 2.61x . Now I hand over to Jaideep to take over the presentation forward.
Thank you, Gangadharan. At Kotak Securities, the top line for this quarter is INR 613 crores. This is compared to INR 516 crores in the corresponding period last year, and INR 571 crores in the quarter ended June 2021. The PBT for this quarter is INR 325 crores, which is compared to INR 266 crores for the quarter ended June 2021, and INR 315 crores for the last quarter. The PAT is at INR 243 crores, which was INR 199 crores in the same period last year, and INR 236 crores in the previous quarter.
Our cash market share for the quarter ended September 2021 is at 11%, which was 9.6% last quarter, and 8.7% in the previous quarter. Some flavor on how the markets have behaved, the equity markets have behaved over the last few quarters. The cash daily volumes in this particular quarter has been at INR 50,000 crore per day. The same number was at INR 56,000 crore the previous quarter. INR 46,000 crore same period last year. Not so much of a difference in the cash market space. Similarly, in the futures market, this quarter has been at about INR 81,000 crore per day. The previous quarter was at INR 83,000 crore a day, whereas the same period last year was at INR 74,000 crore.
The big jump has happened in the options market. The options market for this quarter is at INR 30.4 lakh crores of volumes per day, which was 14 lakh crores in the last quarter and 11 lakh crores in the quarter at the same period. A big jump in the options space. I'm excited to inform that beta testing has started on Kotak Securities' retail trading engine in the last two weeks, which should see some traction happening in the months going forward. I'll now hand over to Manian for the investment banking business.
Thank you. Thank you, Jaideep. The investment bank is having its best ever year. Of course, I'll just also mention that the Kotak Institutional Equities, which is reported within Kotak Securities, is also having a great year, both in the secondary side as well as in partnership with Kotak Mahindra Capital Company, the investment bank, for the primary business. Apart from the fact that Kotak Mahindra Capital Company remains the go-to banker for the IPO business, we are seeing a good pipeline of advisory business as well, and we expect the advisory business also to do well in the current year. Of course, you have the names there. We are there in most of the large new age company business as well as the traditional businesses.
We are seeing extremely good traction in the business and the numbers of course show up. The profit after tax in the quarter is INR 58 crore as against INR 14 crore last year. In the H1 this year, we have already crossed the entire year's profit last year. Much more than that actually. CASA continues to remain good and the pipeline continues to be good. Thank you. Sorry. I will also take on KMIL. Kotak Mahindra Investments Limited is an NBFC, 100% owned NBFC. The primary business we run here are two kinds. One is the real estate, corporate real estate business, the developer financing business and the structured products business.
On the corporate real estate business, we are seeing a robust pipeline. In fact, the asset quality in this business, contrary to what we thought at the beginning of COVID, has been extremely good and robust, and it has given us confidence to build this business and we are now getting far deeper into this business and we are getting entry with new customers and large customers. On the structured product business, of course it's almost a no NPA business and that continues to grow. The outcome is of course there to see. The quarterly PAT is INR 89 crore, as against last year, this period, this was INR 74 crore and in the first quarter this year it was INR 71 crore.
We are seeing good traction and the net NPA position looks good and we continue to be focused in growing this business. Thank you so much. I will hand over to Kannan to cover Kotak Mahindra Prime.
Kotak Mahindra Prime had a profit after tax of INR 240 crore during the quarter. This is in comparison to the INR 79 crore of profit after tax which we had in the previous quarter. Disbursements during the quarter have been much better than the previous quarter, though disbursements have been impacted by the supply constraints faced by car manufacturers. Collection during the quarter has been much better and collection efficiencies are almost back to normal times. During this quarter, Kotak Mahindra Prime acquired the car finance portfolio of Volkswagen Finance. It brings along with it, apart from the portfolio, 30,000 quality customers into our fold. I now hand it over to Nilesh to speak about the aims.
Thanks, Kannan. Good evening, friends. Let me take you through our asset management business for the quarter ending September 2021. Our total average assets under management grew 41% year-on-year to reach INR 2.71 trillion. Our equity assets under management supported by market bounce back grew 67% year-on-year to reach INR 1.28 trillion. Our total average AUM market share reached 7.4%, an increase of 50 basis point over last year. Our equity average assets under management market share increased by 50 basis points to reach 5.4%. Our SIP and average assets under management growth continues to outpace industry. We continue to serve investor requirements by launching both active as well as passive funds focused on local as well as offshore markets.
Our profit after tax grew 15% year-on-year to reach INR 97 crore.
Our total assets under management across mutual funds, PMS, offshore insurance and alternate assets grew 40% year-on-year to reach INR 3.81 trillion. Our relationship value across wealth priority and investment advisory grew 54% to reach INR 4.63 trillion. I will hand it over to Jaimin Bhatt.
Thank you, Nilesh Shah. We will be open for taking questions from the
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Kunal Shah from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead. Kunal Shah, your line is in talk mode. Kindly go ahead with your question, please. As there is no response from the current participant, we move to the next question from the line of Nilanjan Karfa from Nomura. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks. You know, one quick question. I mean, obviously the current account engine seems to be firing quite well. Would you want to ascribe, you know, what exactly have we changed? Because, you know, I mean, there are multiple engines that have worked over the last couple of years. I mean, earlier it was savings. Now it seems to be the current account seems to be doing well for the last three to four quarters. Any color there? And would you, is it more related to, let's say, you know, the IPO market, or there's something more out there?
Yeah. The current account story is split into three parts in my view. One is, of course, the core retail engine is also doing well. That is also growing in a robust way. As I mentioned to you, the second part of the story is the corporate. We have seen significant traction on the back of transaction banking in the Corporate segment as well. The third is, of course, the custody story, which also I mentioned. All three segments have grown. Yes, of course, the fact that capital markets are good helps our custody business. There is some element of that. But having said that, non-custody current account has also grown fairly robustly.
Okay. This would be despite the, you know, the 10% threshold that RBI circular had mentioned.
Yes.
Anything specific that we are doing, you know, which is helping us?
No. It's always a combination. Like I said, in the corporate side, it is transaction banking which works. On the retail side, we are focused on branches in current account area. Shanti, you would like to add anything on the retail side, please go ahead.
Yes, Manian. On the retail side also, as Manian has said, we have seen robust growth, and we really sort of started bundling value-added services along with just current account, including our cash management solutions that I talked about, and other value-added services. We focused on activating our existing customers, you know, much more actively on transactions, and all that has given us a result apart from the NTB. Even in the retail space, the focus is on bundled offerings, value-added services and of course lending when we look at the current account.
Yeah. I'll just add that since you asked the RBI circular part, we have managed the circular part in a way that our losses are not significant. Yes, there is a bit of a loss, but that is of course built into these numbers.
Mm-hmm.
Largely we have been able to plan in a manner that we have lost very little of our book. In cases where we could do credits to reach the 10%, we have done it. This has been a process of over the last six months. We have managed it in a way. In fact, I think our gains will be more than the losses.
Yeah. I think, if I have to add, in addition to what Manian and Shanti are saying, years of effort on the current account sweep product.
Mm-hmm.
Is a differentiating factor at Kotak. Not many people are comfortable allowing sweep product on a current account. We have been offering that for a very long time, and therefore-
Since inception.
Absolutely.
I think since inception there is a natural attraction for a current account customer who has an ability to earn interest by getting automatic sweep in and sweep out above a certain threshold.
Mm-hmm.
Therefore, our ability to get more sticky current accounts and grow them is one of our differentiated propositions, a proposition we did not start opportunistically, but started ever since we became a bank. Therefore, obviously, in the early days, when you are wanting to grow current account, a sweep product naturally cannibalizes on the current account stock, if you have a stock. Since we started with the current account with a zero stock, we continued that all the way for the last 18 years and therefore it is a much more engaging and sticky product for customers to engage with us on current account. If you look at our sweep product, it is 8.3% of our total deposits.
Right.
Therefore, a current account customer who would otherwise get zero interest on his current account by using Sweep above a threshold is actually benefiting. It's a superior customer proposition, which is now helping us also on the total stock.
Right. Today, I can extend probably this question quickly, but this will be a function of then the liquidity and then the interest rate scenario, right? I mean, obviously that probably, you know, given the way you explained this, that could have a larger bearing beyond.
No. My point to you is finally.
Anything is really better than zero.
For a current account of a customer making any interest earning is better than zero. Therefore, whether it's liquidity, low interest rate, high interest rate, if a current account customer gets zero otherwise, but has the ability above a threshold in Sweep, he or she will always prefer that because they are making something in addition to zero.
Sure. No, that point is well taken. Great. How did we do? Obviously there is you know, strong growth push that has happened. I mean, that was, I guess, a long time coming. We did probably need to sacrifice a bit of spread for that. Would this continue in the next, you know, going forward, is there some change in strategy behind that? Or, this is like a run rate kind of thing that you want to look at?
No, I think you got to look at the mix. If you look at when we got into COVID, we had been cautious on unsecured retail even before getting into COVID. We continued to be cautious on unsecured retail all the way up to end of June quarter because COVID 2.0 hit. Therefore, if you look at our quarter-on-quarter growth even in unsecured retail.
Mm-hmm.
10% growth in unsecured retail, which is 10% flat. Okay? We are maybe off a very small base. One of the reasons why you see in the last 18 months we've had a change in the mix because the stock of unsecured retail kept on going down and the secured piece became larger. That obviously the mix has an impact, especially when loan growth for the 18-month period was subdued, has an impact on earnings. Now at a much lower rate of mix, the rate of growth, both in secured as well as unsecured retail, is now revving up. Therefore, overall as a bank, we have grown in the quarter, including credit substitutes at 9% flat for the quarter. If you look at our credit card quarter-on-quarter growth, it's about 13%.
Mm-hmm.
Therefore we had a much lower engine. We are picking it up and really making it grow faster. If you look at our consumer durables financing business on a very low base, we have grown quarter-on-quarter at 76% flat. We are now adding the heft to our mix on the ease of a very low unsecured retail base combined with a continued aggression on secure.
Right. I'll stretch this a bit and then last also ask this, the third question. You know, I guess we are cautious on our unsecured retail.
We were.
Now we are, you know, incrementally that caution is behind us, right?
That's what I'm saying. If you have grown 10% quarter flat, that's 40% annualized. No?
Right. Okay. A housekeeping question.
More importantly, we think now there's a much better quality of distilled modeling which we have.
Sure.
To which we can lend more aggressively than we could in the past.
Sure. Okay, understood. A data keeping question, the quantum of slippages and recoveries and upgrades, please, in absolute rupee terms.
First, I mentioned that during this quarter we had gross slippage. When I say gross slippage, I'll come to it in a minute. That's INR 1,293 crores, against which we have a recovery and upgrade of INR 1,350 crores. When I say gross slippage, it includes people who slipped during this quarter but also recovered during this quarter. If I adjust for that, the slippage will come down to below INR 1,000.
Okay, brilliant. Thanks, Jaimin Bhatt. Thank you, everyone.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Adarsh Parasrampuria from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Hi, Uday and team. Congrats on great set of numbers. One question that I had was you do indicate some higher willingness to now lend and the environment looks good. Just wanted to understand, if you go back to historically benchmarking growth at certain times of the market and all that, given our low base, would you say that the equation can drastically change going forward. Probably some of it showed up in this quarter.
I would like you to without sort of giving you a watertight forward guidance, I would like you to look at and something which we have put up as a chart in our annual general meeting, giving a whole history of Kotak post global financial crisis. You may want to see it. I'm not giving you any forward guidance. In global financial crisis, before the crisis, we and in the early stage of the crisis, Kotak was extremely conservative. Then we can see the chart about how we really got the engine revved up. Our approach, I need to be very clear, is that when unknown unknowns hit us. Our natural tendency is to understand the risk before we jump into the water. Now, 18 months ago, we did not understand COVID pandemic.
Maybe we were not smart. We did not actually understand the nature and the impact of this pandemic, and maybe we missed some opportunities. Who knows? History will be the best judge. As you get your arms around what this risk means and how the pandemic is becoming an endemic, and once we get a certain level of comfort, we are not then understanding the risk, we are getting more comfortable, and which is exactly where we are.
Got it, Uday. Second question is on cost-to-income. Obviously, when business momentum goes up, some costs come in, but the cost ratios have kind of gone up. Not comparing this to COVID lows, but otherwise this is kind of high at 36 odd %. What's the trajectory as the loan book builds up?
One thing I would like to put some very clear objectives on our game plan. I'm clear whatever it takes for us to rev up our customer acquisition engine with the front-end cost, we will take it and we will take it aggressively. The cost may hit us now, but customer acquisition engine, including a much faster physical and digital engine, we will spend. We are clear that this is a battle for ownership of the customer, and this is a battle, not a quarter-on-quarter battle. Similarly, if we have to spend money for front-end growth of our businesses, including for the advances growth of the retail, and that means higher front-end costs, we are very open and ready to take the cost.
That does not mean we are not focused on productivity, but we are making a distinction between ongoing operating costs vs costs related to front-end for growth. We are ready to take the front-end cost for growth rather than worrying about quarter by quarter costs. I hope I'm giving my message about when you look at our cost to income, you have to consider certain base level of costs, which is for running the shop, and second, for growth on customer acquisition, technology and digital, and a much faster canvas. We are very clear. We have the very big advantage vis-à-vis the rest of banking or fintech or consumer tech, call it by whatever name you want. We are a small 2% market share player, and this is the time for us to be taking on whatever it takes, including the cost for getting our engine up.
Therefore, people often ask me, "Are you worried? Oh, so many players coming from consumer tech, FinTech, banks getting more aggressive." I said that, "I am a 2% player. There's 99%, 98% for growth, and all that we need to focus on, where do we take the 2% up to?" That's all that we need to do while keeping our natural conservatism with reference to risk and return.
Got it, Uday. I'll just squeeze in the last question. Is the last couple of years we've seen like a humongous amount of cost of benefit. Sometimes some, you know, obviously there's a lot linked to franchise, but some of it is also linked to slower growth, right? When you don't grow, the network doesn't really need to give out a lot of money to raise retail TDs and all that, right? As you rev up this, do you see that pressure come up or how do you respond to this?
With reference to the liability franchise?
Liabilities and the cost of liabilities because, let's say, right, we hardly had any need to accrete TDs over the last couple of years with that.
I think at this stage we have great confidence in our liability franchise and the engine, and it is up to us. Now, keep in mind, yes, our star liability engine had slowed down, but keep in mind there was a significant friction when a bank which was giving 6% starts making corrections. We think we are past the friction stage.
Got it. Thanks, sir. This was useful then.
Thank you. We request all the participants to please limit their questions to two per participant. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Saurabh from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Sir, just two questions. One is, how should we think about your net interest margins? You have excess liquidity on the book. Your LCR is 153%, but the incremental growth will probably be in lower yielding segments as well. That's reflected if you look at your core PPOP is still flat quarter-on-quarter. How would you think about the NIM trajectory going ahead? That's the first one and-
My position is pretty clear. I'm looking at the windshield in front, not the rearview mirror in terms of what my PPOP is, what my mix is. We have very clearly said, and including you can see the early signs of that number. We are not only growing secured, as you've seen, and I said this is very recent, August, September. Therefore, when I'm saying we've grown 9% flat for the quarter, which is 36% annual, there are two important points. One is we are at the advantage of base. Second-
Yeah.
It's the fact that we were very light on our PAR, which is reflecting in our stress numbers. Okay? Therefore, our PAR position is very light, as reflected in our stress numbers. We have been very cautious on unsecured retail. Therefore, in the mix that has gone down. We started first with a more aggressive position on secured retail, particularly home loans. We now actually feel as the pandemic moves endemic, we think we've got much better ability to analyze the data, and we are getting significantly more comfortable with unsecured retail as we have shown 10% growth in this quarter in unsecured retail flat. That is 40% annualized, albeit of a much smaller base.
The business
The second important point which you need to keep in mind, in addition to secured, home loans and unsecured retail is our business banking, whether it's working capital, the banking in our consumer bank or in the SME business, it is beginning to fire. Therefore, my approach to this is whatever is the rearview mirror of last 18 months is a rearview mirror. We did get a little sidestep by COVID 2.4, to be honest, which, just as we were revving up our engine, May, particularly end April to middle and June, sort of got up a little out of where we thought it will be. Frankly, we did not expect such a Vicious 2.0.
We now believe that has delayed us by two months, but the engine is ready to go and August, September are good signs.
Got it, sir. That's clear. The second, sir, is obviously you've given a lot of details on your digital this time. I mean, can you just quantify what is the technology spend, maybe in terms of what % of revenue, what you are investing in this business, or any absolute amount?
I think we will give you that at the right time. Till then-
That will it?
You know, I think my request to you is, as I've said to the earlier question, we are gonna grow our front-end costs for customer acquisition, digitalization, and technology because we think that is the future. The front-end costs will continue to be aggressive, but we are in the business of growing our customer franchise at a much faster pace. At some point of time, we will share it with you when we think we are seeing some sort of a stability.
Okay. Sir, if you benchmark it to, let's say, tier one private banks, would you be in line as a % of revenue or would you be higher?
I'm saying I am very clear. My future is consumer tech. My future is-
Okay.
Fintech. My future is maybe other private bank. My future is maybe PSU bank. My future is some unknown player. I have to be out there in the battle of the customer without being constrained by benchmarking against any one category.
Got it, sir. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kunal Shah from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Congratulations for good set of numbers. In terms of the home loans, we have this rate offering, but even if you can explain in terms of building the capabilities, with say, is it more in-house or we are getting aggressive in a even in terms of the outsourcing that is happening because there is a good enough growth which is happening on the home loan side.
Shanti.
Yeah. If you're talking about distribution of home loans, I think we are, you know, our internal channels, our own customer base, we work with external partners. Given what's happening in the market, both you know what's happening from a demand, the good pricing, low interest rate, we've been able to get business from all around. We have scaled our team, we have scaled our internal capacities, and thus we are able to grow the business. The important thing is with this price, we're getting very high quality customers, which can then become holistic banking customers. This is one of the gates we have opened, and that's what it is.
In terms of the new customer acquisition, which we are seeing on the asset side, how much would be like, say, already the existing relationship with the bank on the liability? What is the potential to further cross-sell, both on the asset as well as on the liability side? That is where I was getting to. We are seeing a good growth all through on the asset side now. But what is the kind of profile? Is it like new to bank, or is it like say the existing customers whom we are cross-selling?
See, it is different for different products because like I told you, we are on a growth phase in almost all the products. It can range anywhere from, you know, 25%-50% in terms of new customers. It ranges. In home loans, I would say that anywhere we are getting a reasonable amount of NTB customers, new to bank customers.
Okay. What would be the proportion of the outsourced, maybe in terms of the DSAs, outside of our own branches and other networks?
Broadly, our own internal contributes anywhere till about 55% of our sourcing, and the balance comes from the external partners.
Okay. Secondly, in terms of say where we have extended ECLGS facility, can you give maybe I think it's been almost like, say, eight, nine months into that, but how are we seeing the behavior of those customers?
Kunal, I think you may have missed the early part. If you look at our stress numbers, that includes-
Yeah.
Flow through into NPA from ECLGS customers, if any. Our overall restructuring on COVID account is..
Yeah.
Both COVID 1 and 2 put together is 33 basis points. +21 basis on SME restructuring and our credit cost is 63 basis points. All this includes all flow through in stress between restructuring and NPA.
Okay. Even in terms of
NPA numbers are already there. NPA numbers are strong for the
Yeah. NPA and restructuring is good. I was just trying to gauge in terms of on ECLGS side post one year.
Kunal, if any ECLGS is getting into trouble, it will show in one of those two places.
Okay. That is nothing like, say, there is a payment holiday or something, and it will get reflected. Yeah.
Either it's in restructuring or it's in NPA or it's in SMA-2. Our SMA-2 number also we have shared. Our SMA-2 number is also shared with you.
Yeah. Okay. This takes into account everything. Okay, great. Okay. Yeah. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rahul Verma from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening. Most of my questions-
Mr. Verma, if you can speak closer to the answer please. Your voice is inaudible.
Yeah. Hi, this is Rahul here. Can you hear me?
Yeah, Rahul, we can hear you.
Yeah. Thanks, Uday, and everyone, good evening. I think most of the questions have been answered, but again, sorry to belabor on this OpEx point. You know, so clearly, I think, Uday, you know, of course, you know, good to hear that you know the outlook is looking better from the growth standpoint on the loan side. But on the OpEx side, you know, when do you see the inflection would start getting reflected in the numbers on the operating leverage? And which are the products you think could drive that?
Is it going to be mortgages, which is what I think the focus seems to be at this point of time, or is it going to be, you know, combination of, let's say consumer retail, you know, various, you know, various parts of it? Just trying to think through, because like you, yourself admitted that, you know, the OpEx, if needed, bank would be willing to spend, but at some stage the leverage would be reflected.
Hello.
Hello?
Yeah. We can hear you. Okay. I'll ask my colleague Dipak Gupta. Rahul, can you hear Dipak?
I unfortunately cannot hear him. I can hear you, though.
Dipak hasn't started talking. That's why you can't hear him. Yeah.
Okay.
Okay, Rahul. Basically, you know, when you have growth, there will be some costs which will come upfront, yeah. They will be investment costs. You know, for the time period which growth is high, these upfront costs will keep coming. I think it is not easy to look at a leveling off level until you see growth itself leveling off. Yeah. For example, if you are growing home loans at a certain %, yeah, your upfront costs will keep hitting you. If that growth rate continues, those costs will keep hitting you until you level off growth. Yeah. It's the same also on the liability side. You know, while we keep on acquiring new digital customers, there is an upfront cost. As growth rates are high, those costs will keep coming up really.
You know, it's very difficult for you to disaggregate the investment costs from the run costs to arrive at, you know, what point of time you're going to level off. I think for the time being, I think let us just concentrate on the growth, yeah. As long as we're convinced that, you know, this growth is profitable, it is positive contribution, I don't think the cost, which is an investment really is a worry.
Thanks, Dipak. Just a small extension to that. You know, the PPOP ROAs, which is of course this quarter, took a you know bit of a knock. Should we say that, you know, we kind of you know hit the bottom and from here things should start getting better on the PPOP ROA?
No, it will get better because you see your ROA to some extent also depends on the mix in a certain period of time. Yeah. What you see as ROA just now is the mix of this quarter. Yeah.
Yeah.
As the unsecured piece starts catching up, the SME piece starts catching up, you will see that mix change reflecting in the ROA appropriately.
One last question. When you look at the mortgage piece, on a standalone basis, just the pure spread seems to be pretty healthy. You know, just doing simple math, could be easily north of, you know, 3.5%-4%. Is this a comfortable threshold for you all to grow this portfolio or, you know, it could be even lower than-
Well, you know, are you hinting at telling Shanti to reduce the home loan rates further?
Kind of, yeah.
Rahul, it's all that I can say is in case you are looking for a loan with the interest rate scenario, which you must be a better judge of, this could be as good a time as any. Grab it as soon as you can.
Before eighth November? No, but jokes apart, I think the spreads are reasonable for what I call an acceptable ROE, yeah, given the growth opportunity and the customer proposition. Yeah. I think
If I can add on this, we are actually quite surprised at the pace of inflow of demand for home loans which we are getting.
Yeah. You know, Kunal touched upon how much was in-house and how much was outsourced. Just now there is an overflow, so it's a very healthy sign really.
Got it. Just this one last point just to wrap it up. You know, in the previous quarters, previous calls, I think Uday you talked about the inorganic opportunity, which is out there and bank is always open. But as you look forward, you know, next few quarters and years, is it going to be more driven by organic now, given that the outlook is getting better for you all or you say it's a fair mix of organic and inorganic?
Rahul, I think we are quite open. Having said that, we have a reasonable view about how we think of inorganic, and should it be appropriate, we will look at that opportunity in all seriousness, and we will do what is right. That's the two are pretty independent in terms of our plans. When we think about the future, obviously the common thing is we care about getting customers.
Understood. On the consumer retail side, I presume, more so. Like
No, we are also open to consumer retail. We also like customers in business banking. You know, you'll see now, we are very focused on business banking customers. They also help us in the liability side on low cost liability. We like and also a whole stream of services incomes which come from that. Therefore, we like consumers, we like business banking customers. On the other side, we believe the wholesale banking business is transforming much closer to the market side, which is where we are well adjusted for the markets opportunity along with the wholesale banking business, including debt capital market business. We manage our sourcing vs distribution well.
Understood. Thank you so much, and I wish you all good luck.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jai Mundhra from B&K Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. One, sir, if you can quantify the ECLGS outstanding number that we have at the end of this quarter. Would it be fair to assume that 8% quarter-on-quarter growth that we have is more or less, you know, it will also be applicable to the people who had taken ECLGS borrowings at the beginning, I mean, in the beginning.
Sir, number is INR 12,300 crore, close to INR 12,300 crore. ECLGS loans outstanding will be that, right?
That's right.
Yeah.
Exactly INR 12,300 crore.
Yeah. Like Uday mentioned earlier, we aren't seeing any difference in the behavior of that portfolio vis-a-vis the normal portfolio. If at all it is behaving better in most products, we are just now not seeing, so it's not such a big item to track separately, is the way we look at it just now.
Yeah, because, sir, it would be a substantial portion of your loan book, right? INR 12,000 crore is the ECLGS disbursement only. The corresponding loan book would be at least 30%-35% of your loan book. It is reasonable to believe that this portfolio is also growing in line with the overall number.
No. If you look at it doesn't mean that INR 12,300 crore into six. That's not the right way to do it, because a lot of people who would have taken ECLGS have not necessarily increased their exposure. If you look at INR 12,300 crore is the ECLGS amount, the absolute exposure to these entities would be of the order of about INR 55,000 crore odd.
Right. Even, sir, INR 55,000 crore is around 20% of your book. There is not too much of a difference between this portion of the bank and the rest of the book.
No. That's right.
I think we again highlighted that if there was any issue in that book, it would flow into our restructuring or into our NPA and credit costs. We have given the details of all our restructuring, SME restructuring, total cost, total restructuring book in SME is 21 basis points. Our NPA numbers are already with you in our presentation, and our credit costs have also been shared with you at 63 basis points.
Right.
The only exception could be, sir, that these because initially there was a 12 months moratorium on this particular facility. I understand that, you know, there was no moratorium on the existing facility. Maybe that could. I mean, the entire outstanding may be out of moratorium only in this quarter. Maybe
No. One minute. On the primary outstanding of loan, there was no moratorium, right? The moratorium was on the 20% lending that was there. So he's still paying the primary loan on which we did a ECLGS. If he was not able to pay that, it would already show up in our NPA.
That clarifies. The second point is, sir, if you can comment on why the loan growth has been very strong, even on YoY QOQ, the same has not been reflected in the NII on YoY and QOQ. Part of that, I think we have explained that is because of the mix. Is there any, you know, if you want to, in short, provide some more clarity there, because I-
It's simple. The loan growth has started in August and September.
Okay.
NII takes time to make.
Sir, I'll add two points. One is, you rightly said there's a mix change. The growth has happened much more if you're comparing with now YoY. When we looked at credit cards and all, while the quarter has had a positive number, the YoY number is actually negative for both the unsecured pieces. So that does impact. So the mix is much more in favor of the lower yielding piece. The third thing, NII is also comprised of not just advance. NII is also comprised of what you make on investments. As I mentioned, while the advances have grown, the investment book has actually shrunk from a year on year. To that extent, the earning assets has grown only about 5% for this during the year on year period.
Understood. The last data point question, sir, if you have the RWA number for the standalone bank? That is it. Thank you.
Give me a minute. RWA as of September will be INR 2,83,000.
Great, sir. Thank you, and all the best, sir.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Uday Kotak for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
With that, I thank all of you for spending time, and I wish each of you a wonderful Diwali and New Year, and look forward to meeting you in both the summer as well as the calendar new year soon. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Kotak Mahindra Bank, that concludes this conference. Thank you all for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.