Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the IDFC FIRST Q3 FY24 Earnings Call, hosted by ICICI Securities. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode. There will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during this conference, please signal an operator by pressing star and then zero on your Touch-Tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Chintan Shah from ICICI Securities Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Yeah. Thank you, Darwin. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Q3 FY 2024 earnings conference call for IDFC FIRST Bank. We have with us from the senior management, Mr. V. Vaidyanathan, our Managing Director and CEO, along with the other members from the senior management team. So without further delay, I would now like to hand over the floor to the management. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Good evening, everybody, this is Vaidyanathan. Thank you very much for joining us.
Good evening, everyone. I'm Sudhanshu Jain. Thank you for joining. Hi, this is Saptarshi Bapari . Welcome to you.
Good evening, everybody. First of all, thank you very much for joining us on this late Saturday evening. You have many results to deal with, so thanks for joining us. We are. The key highlight, I think, for this quarter, is that we have come out with Guidance 2.0. So when you think of Guidance 1.0, which is what we gave at the time of the merger in December 2018, we had guided for, at that point of time, we almost thought that the first year will be gone in just dealing with many matters, so we gave a guidance for 2025. So that guided guidance stays, and we will still keep it on the website, and we'll track ourselves to it.
You will continue to see it. In the interim, we just saw that this quarter marks exactly the end of exactly five years after merger. So we've come out with the Guidance 2.0. Now, when we started, when we gave the Guidance of 1.0, let me just share that we really had very little visibility, very little. Because merger just happened, Capital First, IDFC just merged, and the deposit book was something like about retail deposit book was something like about INR 10,000 crore, and 10, 400 crores, to be precise. The loan book was something like about 1 lakh 4 thousand crore. We had bonds and deposit bonds of about maybe 50,000 or 55,000 crore. We had wholesale deposits of about 30,000-odd crore.
We had certificate of deposit, just two months' money, which was about, let's say, INR 28 to 30 or 28 thousand crore. So that's sort of an odd base on the deposit side. Deposit borrowing side is largely institutional, we call it 92% institutional. So frankly, for any management to guess how quickly we will fix this and become it, make it a retail, would have been just a good, let me give a good educated guess. Again, on the asset side, a lot of things would have been still in uncertainty. Under those circumstances, we still came out with a guidance, and then after that, we saw COVID, we saw many things. But I'm happy to say that almost literally on every benchmark, we are coming good.
On one front, probably maybe one or two elements, we are not right up there, but I think we'll get close. So we now, as we gave the guidance, you know, let me just say that during this period of the last five years, the key success for the bank has been deposits. Just to share with you that the retail deposits of, as of 31 March 2018, 31 December 2018, was precisely INR 10,400 crore. Today, just five years, it is INR 1,39,431 crore. That is a growth of INR 1,29,000 crore. If you take the total deposits, we also had INR 29,000 crore of wholesale deposits with us.
So INR 10,400 plus the wholesale deposit of that INR 29,000 to 30,000 crore, so maybe INR 40,000 crore or INR 39,602 crore, to be precise. That 39,600 crore is today INR 1,76,481 crore. So that is again a good growth on deposits. So a third is CASA ratio. CASA ratio now has come to about 46.8%, which is again quite strong. So let me just say that one defining factor for the last five years has been deposit growth, growth period. And all of us know that deposits practically are the foundation of any bank. And this kind of deposit growth has come despite the fact that along the way, we dropped interest rates.
Most people thought that we'd stay with a 6%, 7% strategy for like, maybe long time, but literally within 3 years, we dropped it, and now we pay INR 0 to INR 1 lakh. We just pay 3%, just 3. And still last quarter, we saw deposit grow by 44% year-over-year .
43.
43% year-over-year . So I think that frankly, once deposit is strong, we are sorted. We are sorted, I say, because the contra side is loan book. Now, the loan book, if you see, has not grown very much during this period, over the last five years. The loan book has grown from INR 101,000 crore, you know, that's, yeah. So the loan book, during the same period has grown just INR 104,000 crore to INR 189,475 crore, five years. So you might say that if the loan deposit grows so fast, 4.5x in five years from INR 39,000 crore to INR 176,000 crore, then how come loan book only grew this much?
We, all of you seasoned investors know the reason, that we slowed down loans just because we wanted to fix the CASA ratio. So basically, the point is that both the, you know, the on the asset side, we have a strong, stable business model. I'm actually happy to share that our NPA now for 14 years running, meaning 14 years, it will become the 14th year in March of 2024. Now, 14 years is a really long time, I hope you'll all agree, that our gross NPA net NPA has been 2% and 1%. A really long time. And, in this 14 years, we have broadly migrated from lending to the, largely unorganized segment when we started, to now we have become more, more relatively more like a more prime bank.
Like, for example, if we were to give loan against property, say 8 years ago, 10 years ago, we would lend loan against property at maybe 12 or 13% because the banks were doing a prime loan against property of maybe 9, 9.5 then. Today, we lend at 9, 9.5 on the loan against property, and then there may be other NBFCs who are lending at maybe 30, 40%. So we've come down the risk curve, and therefore we are feeling much more stable about our credit quality going forward. Now, the gross NPA at the end of this quarter is just about 1.5% on the retail side. Retail, MSME and rural side, 1.45%, and the net NPA is only 0.5%.
So it's been a very long time to have sustained, you know, quarter on quarter, year-on-year for 14 years, let me say 13 years and three quarters to be more precise. It really gives me a lot of confidence and now anyway, since we come down the risk curve to become a little more, more like the mainstream bank, I think this should continue now for a while. So therefore, there are three things that jump out at our last four, five years of work is that the deposit grew, the loan book grew, the asset quality stable. Now. Sorry, somebody is disturbing me on my mobile phone. Just pardon me. I'm going to just take a small this. Yeah. Now, the second thing is that, once the, that's one part.
Second part is that when we look at our bank, there's a lot of harmony within our bank. Harmony, meaning the way the bank is working, the way the system is working up and down across, up and down the chain, inter-division. There is a lot of tranquility and we just focus on our work, and that gives us an ability to move smoothly ahead. And you know, this is all a lot of teamwork going on in the bank, you know, today, myself, Sudhanshu is speaking to you as a two-person team, but frankly, we're speaking on behalf of all our employees that this success actually comes back a while from Dr. Rajiv Lall, because we.
I really don't want to go back in time and say this was the issue, or that was the issue, because really, someone worked very hard and almost against impossible odds, got this bank a bank license. So let me just say the first note of thanks starts with him. It's like an impossible feat. But after that, if he had not got the license, I guess there would be no IDFC Bank today, right? It's the first bank. And, and after that, it starts about how the bank is built over the last five years, and things have all come good. Now, basis what has happened and how the foundation is built, we are now, and, and also based on the momentum that we are having, we are now looking forward to how the next five years would look like.
When we look at next five years, frankly, today we have a lot more visibility. I started this conversation by saying that we had less visibility when we started, when we gave the Guidance 1.0, but now we have far more visibility. We have a stable lending model. We know we are originating about INR 44,000 crore a year on deposits, and now we are trying to only extrapolate what it could take for us over the next five years. So we are now guiding that our deposit base as of December 31, 2023, is INR 176,000 crore as we spoke as it closes quarter. We believe that we will be something like about INR 585,000 crore as of March 31, 2019.
Now, if you think that's a very steep climb, just remember that we came from INR 30,000 crore to here. Now, the other reason why we should feel reasonably confident about this is that currently our deposits are growing upward of 40%. For the next five years, we've assumed a deposit growing only by 24.8%. We think this should be reasonably easy for us. Next is assets. On the assets front, as you know, we started with INR 1.04 lakh crore, today we are INR 1.89 lakh crore. Now, we are guiding that our assets will be INR 5 lakh crore in thirty-first, March 2029. Again, don't think it's too steep a jump from INR 1.89 lakh crore to INR 5 lakh crore, because we are guiding for only a 20.3% growth, five years, five-year CAGR. We're currently growing 24.5%.
20 should be easy, should not be a problem. So, an INR 500,000 crore loans and advances book, now including SLR, et cetera, will take us to assets of about INR 700,000 crore. Third thing is, after deposits and assets is asset quality. Now, asset quality, today, our gross NPA is only 2.04%. But remember, this has infrastructure, and we know infrastructure will go away, we're bringing it down. So if you see X infrastructure, today our gross NPA is 1.66%, and our net NPA is 0.47%. The way we are trending, we are guiding for a gross NPA of 1.5% and net NPA of 0.2%. That's what we'd like to keep the bank at.
Again, considering already 1.66, 1.5 should not be a problem, and considering we are at 0.47, maintaining 0.4 should not be a problem broadly. Give or take economic conditions, another crazy COVID coming, you know, caveating, those kind of weird things happening, this should be achievable the way we're building the business. Fourth is profitability. Now, profitability, now, we believe that the bank is comfortably moving towards an ROA of 1.9%-2%. Now, if you do the math and you multiply 1.9% or 2% on INR 700,000 crore of assets, you can see that 700,000 crore was closing number, so the average assets of 2028, 2029 should be something about INR 630,000 crore.
On INR 630,000 crore, you put, apply 2%, you know, you're getting to about, you know, INR 12,500 crore. So we are thinking that our broad guess is, is that we could be somewhere around INR 12,000-13,000 crore in profitability in, uh, uh, as in, in March 2029. For context, for this year, nine months, we are like INR 2,230 crore. To annualize it, you're getting something like about INR 3,000 crore. So we believe that INR 3,000 crore going to INR 12,500 crore should be very possible.
You know, frankly, if we deliver the first four items, you grow the loan book to, you know, about INR 500,000 crore, grow the deposits to INR 585,000 crore, the rest should fall in line because our business model pretty straightforward, and we can maintain asset quality. Now, ROA is the last one, and we've had a tough time dealing with our cost-income ratios and ROA, et cetera, because we know our cost-income was always high. We did explain to many of you that because it's a setup stage of the bank, we have branches, there's ATM network, technology, all the stuff we told you.
But net, net, it has been, it's, it's been part of. We are very clear it was the setup stage of the bank, and we had to do what we had to do to build the bank for the future. So think of it like the first half or let me say first five years have gone into building the foundation of the bank. That process of laying foundation never go away because banks are forever getting built. But we believe phase two, we will be able to reap the benefit of phase one, and therefore we are guiding for ROA of somewhere in the zone of 17%-18%, give or take.
So I would say that these are all in good faith because we have done our spreadsheets, and we've analyzed it many times over between Sudhanshu, myself, Saptarshi, et cetera. But these are things in good faith, as you know, results may vary. It can happen. We may have achieved, overachieved, underachieved, whatever. But largely I'd say more than achieving, and that is one may or may not be achieved in phase two, so please take all our caveats seriously. But we are being given in good faith with numbers which we believe are reasonably achievable.
And frankly, for a bank starting where it was in 2018, December, in 10 years, to reach a position of INR 500,000 crore of loan book and INR 700,000 crore of deposits, sorry, INR 600,000 crore of deposits, and INR 12,000 to 13,000 crore of PAT, with ROA of 1.92, PAT and ROA of 18, will be a solid position to be in. And more importantly, the direction, directionally will be looking good. And other things, anyway, apart from these numbers, the bank is a good bank, really high quality bank, good customer practices, good culture, good practices, good, you know, governance, a really very, very, very good board, very, you know, a high quality board with high quality people.
All of them have been through a lot, very sensitive to regulatory, regulatory commentary, and so on, and wanting to work within the guidance of the law and guidance of regulations. So that sort of, you know, compliant bank, I think that we are set for, we are reasonably well set. So that's probably a brief comment, to start the discussion. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Vidya. I'll quickly touch upon certain key numbers. I'll try to keep it short. To start with, the overall balance sheet size now is at INR 270,000 crore, and balance sheet expanded by 22% on a year-over-year basis. We continue to see a very strong momentum on our lending book, as well as the deposit book. As Vidya mentioned, customer deposits increased by 43% on a year-over-year basis. It's now INR 176,000 crore. In fact, the growth in retail deposits was higher at 47% on a year-over-year basis. CASA ratio also, you would have seen, has improved sequentially to 46.8%. CASA deposits increased by 29% on a year-over-year basis. Average current accounts have increased by 33% on a year-over-year basis, and by average, CASA increased by 26% on a year-over-year basis.
We also continue to see a faster growth in term deposits, which grew by 59% on a year-over-year basis, as customers preferred to lock in the interest rates, which are prevailing in the system. The growth here also was predominantly driven by retail. Retail deposits ratio to total customer deposits continues to improve and has increased to now 79%, versus 76% at the start of the year. We have opened about 35 branches during the current quarter, thereby taking the branch count to close to 900 branches. The stock of legacy borrowings further reduced by about INR 1,400 crore during Q3, and another INR 1,300 crore is scheduled for runoff in Q4 2024. We have given more details around this in the presentation.
Moving on to the asset side, overall funded assets grew by 24.5% on a year-over-year basis to reach INR 180,000 crore. I will cover this in four segments: retail book, comprising a mortgage, vehicle portfolio, that's essentially car and two-wheelers, then consumer loans, credit card, education loan and vehicles. This portion of the book grew at 29% on a year-over-year basis. We have seen strong growth across all categories. Growth in certain segments, like vehicles and consumers, are also relatively higher on account of higher demand due to festive season and our increasing presence. Talking of credit cards within retail, the bank has now issued more than 2.2 million cards. The book has almost reached INR 5,000 crore. The gross spend on credit cards increased by 61% in nine and 2024.
Further, the SME book, which is for business purposes and the corporate segment, increased by 16% on a year-over-year basis. Also, happy to report that infrastructure book is now just nearly 1.6% of the total funded assets and now below INR 3,000 crores. Moving on to asset quality. The gross NPA of the bank further improved by seven basis points during the current quarter and stood at 2.04%, and net NPA ratio stood stable at 0.68% during the current quarter. As Vaidya mentioned, if we exclude the infrastructure book, the GNPA improves to 1.66, and net NPA improves to 0.47.
GNPA in the retail, rural, and the SME segment also improved by 8 basis points to 1.45%, and the net NPA is now just at 0.51%. The overall standard restructure book continues to come down and has further reduced to 0.35% of funded assets as compared to 0.38% last quarter. More than 93% of the restructured book is secured in nature. Moving on to profitability. Profit after tax for nine months FY 2024 increased to INR 2,232 crore, versus INR 1,635 crore in 9M of last year, up by 37%. For the quarter, profit grew by 18% year-over-year to INR 716 crore. This was largely driven by strong growth in core operating income.
Core operating profit, which is NII plus fees, excluding trading gains, for 9M and FY 2024, grew by 35% year-over-year. For the quarter, it grew by 24% to INR 1,515 crore. For the quarter, NII increased by 50% on a year-over-year basis to INR 4,287 crore. The net interest margin improved by 10 basis points on a sequential basis to 6.42%. Fee also registered a strong growth. It increased by 32% to INR 1,469 crore for Q3, FY 2024, and this was largely retail led, which is at 92% of the total fee. Operating expenses increased by 33% on a year-over-year basis due to strong business volumes witnessed in this quarter, and with branch expansion and some increase in other expenses, like marketing and so on.
We had a trading gain of INR 48 crore during the quarter, and provisions came in at INR 655 crore for the quarter. The credit cost as a percentage of average funded assets for nine months FY 2024 stood at 1.26%, which is well below the guidance which we had given earlier. We are not impacted by the guidelines which came recently around AIF investments at all. On an annualized basis, ROA stood at 1.16% as against 1.05% in 9M 2023, and ROA stood at 10.7% for nine months FY 2024 , as against 9.9% for the same period last year. The bank has maintained strong capital adequacy.
The capital adequacy now stands at 16.70% at December 31, 2023, with CET 1 ratio at 13.95%. This takes into account the capital of INR 3,000 crore, which we mobilized in earlier October. We continue to maintain healthy liquidity levels, and average LCR was at 121% for Q3 FY 2024. We have been maintaining this for, on a consistent basis across quarters, if you see our previous numbers. With this, so I've covered all, broadly all the, facets, all the numbers, the key numbers. We will be happy to take the questions.
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 touchtone telephone. If you wish to withdraw 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 Ishan Agarwal from Erevna Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening. Thank you for the opportunity. I would say decent, but slightly underwhelming performance by the bank. So I have three questions. Should I ask them together or should I shoot them one by one?
One by one is better.
Okay. So the first one be, in our preview, the management has always highlighted that core total income will be faster than OpEx for 2024, 2025 and 2026, and that is how operating leverage was going to play out. It is slightly disappointing to see OpEx here growing 33% year-over-year, and income growing 31%, which in turn has upped our cost to income from 72.1% last year to 73.3% this year. What is really causing this pain in OpEx? What are the factors playing out, and what the management could not envisage while giving the past numbers?
Let's take them one by one. So thanks, thanks for that very crisp question. See, the thing is, I have always mentioned to you, I know Sudhanshu may have told you again and again, that listen, please don't track it every quarter by quarter. See, very early stage, early stage bank, sometimes, you know, one odd item ca- expense catches up, some disposition expense catches up on some other product. Something happens one quarter or the other. You know, if you go, year-over-year, our own guess is if you take a, an all of parts, all part of parts cases that come, right?
I want to just point out one number to you, that if you take, you know, a 5-year window, that is 2019 to 2023, 2020, 2021 to 2024, four years, you know, we've seen that the balance sheet has grown by 9% from the time of merger to today, 5 years actually. 9%, but the CASA has grown to 43%. So my point.
And by the way, I'm not claiming it is still the 9, 43 CASA still. But definitely for a balance sheet loan book growing by about 20%, which we are, you know, which we guided again now, and for the operating profit to grow, increase about 30%-33% should be the kind of zone you should look for for the next 2-5 years. You know, really, I told you, it's an early stage bank, really difficult to point out, oh, this quarter, this happened, that happened. It's waste of your time and my time.
Understand. Understand, but this was a year-over-year increase in cost to income, and that is why I highlighted this. So it's not quarter-on-quarter, which I'm comparing. Even year-on-year, from 72.1, it is up to 73.3, whereas, we are expecting, maybe a plateauing or maybe a decline from your own. So,
I agree with that. I fully agree with that. But I'm just pointing out to you that I say this result is a bit underwhelming actually. We should have expected to post a little better. I think the past level, we should have posted a bit better.
Right. Actually, core operating, not even that, there may be some one-offs, but, that is slightly underwhelming on that part.
I, I agree. I agree. 100% I agree. Could have done a bit better, could have expected a little better. But it's, you know, like I said, we are running a long game here for 10-year game, out of which five is finished, maybe even longer from there, it'll be many, many decades after that.
Right.
You know, just to take this part of the slight moments of one piece again.
So, going ahead, do you expect that cost to income should start declining from your own, or do we still expect it to keep at this level for a year or two?
Our sense is that Q3, Q4 of 2025 should begin to see material movement onwards. We think that, like I said, there are some movement, for example, some product categories, we are in next quarter onwards, in one or two quarters there will be some impact because of, you know, there'll be, we do the digital loans, for example. In the digital loans, you know, for a period of time, there was, you know, there was no FLDG permitted, for example. And last quarter, for example, FLDG got permitted. Now, we have, we had a certain structure with the counterparty. Now we move on to the structure with the FLDG.
When we move to FLDG structure, the benefit of not having credit cost, because the counterparty will guarantee that FLDG, that benefit will come two quarters from then, meaning then the credit cost would have hit us, they would have supported us, they would have paid for it. But in the interim, the impact will be there. So I don't want to confuse all of you with all these mathematics, but the point is that our own sense is that next quarter we'll move over to the FLDG structure. So, the benefit of moving to FLDG structure will come in Q3, Q4 2025, and, which will show up in credit cost line. So therefore, these moments, will slightly give better benefits for us by, exit quarter 2025.
Okay. Okay. So, now, as you mentioned about FLDG, my next question was actually regarding credit cost. While our loan book has grown by, say, 24% year-over-year, our provisions have grown by 45% year-over-year, in spite of all collection efficiency numbers, SMA numbers improving year-over-year. So what is the reason for this?
Yeah, I said this to you earlier also. Oftentimes, when we go for, when we compare year-over-year for early stage banks, either last time there would have been something very much in. Remember, we were running credit costs of only 1.15%.
Is there any one-off this time, or this is normalized?
Just hear me one second. So we were running really very low credit cost for a book that is giving the kind of yield and NIM it is giving us. Our credit costs are running so low, in fact, many people came to us to scratch their head, "How can your credit cost be only 1.1%?" It is even lower than many, you know, top banks. So, you know, we were, during post-COVID, we were getting certain recoveries. Because if you remember, during COVID, we took provisions. Now, many of the recoveries started coming. So the last two years we were getting a benefit of the recoveries. So some of the recoveries we also paid off. So, that's why I said sometimes, you know, there might be some odd items here and there.
Also, you know, we moved over to the 90th day recognition of NPA rather than 91st day, and that also had some impact. T hink of it like here and there, but our guidance is that, let me step back for 2 minutes because, you know, we've quoted a few here and there, items. Let me just step back and just give you what we see, and that is the heart of it. What we are seeing is our collection percentage, which we reported at 99.5% now for little, like, 2 years or expects now, last month in December increased up to 99.6%.
Right.
Let me call it to 99.5 for simplicity sake. So if collection percentage stays the way it is, cheque bounce is very low. Let me say, very low meaning very low, it's like 6 point something. So, which also we are collecting during the same month in a big way. So the point is that the underlying parameters are strong, so there's no reason, like, fundamentally to be disturbed or anything like that. I mean, you, you watch our next quarter, you'll see the results for yourself.
Okay. Okay. And, one more from my end. With the new RBI norms on risk weights for unsecured credit, our Tier 1 capital adequacy is down to less than 14, in spite of the capital raise that we did last quarter, that is in October. So now, given that it is at 13.95%, when do you think we'll again have a Tier 1 capital, to, shore up the capital adequacy?
We will watch the numbers with the way the profits emerge over the next four quarters.
Because we do have an idea of the capital consumption that the balance will do. So what is your target? That, okay, we don't want to go below Tier 1, say, 12.5% or 12% or?
No, we don't, we don't spell out precisely when you raise capital, it's not a good strategy for any bank to exactly put out in the market how much capital, agree?
Yeah.
We'll make up our mind as we go along, depending on the numbers.
Okay. Just, just one more. So if I look at the cards data released by RBI, it is unusual to notice that the number of debit cards in force for IDFC in November has reduced for the first time as compared to September, which is, So from 66.5, from 67.8 lakh to 66.5 lakh. So is there some reason? Were there some dormant accounts were closed, or what?
Yeah, could have been some dormant account cleanup that being done by the respective teams. The other is inflow, see, basically, the bank is more and more moving towards quality, and we are, very, very fast about it. So we are opening lesser number of accounts than before, on the bank account, especially on the digital side, but we are focusing on quality. So the inflow is very strong, that's how we saw growth of close to about INR 4,000 crore a month of deposits kept coming in. So let me say, deposits are rising very well. There have been some closure of some, you know, customers who are inactive and those kind of respective product teams keeping the work.
Okay. Okay. Thank you, and all the best. It's really commendable the way the bank is growing the deposits. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Shubhranshu Mishra from Phillip Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening. Thank you for the opportunity. Two or three questions. The first one is around the personal loans. Just wanted to understand the run rate of personal loans that we originate from various fintechs, and the level of FLDG that we do from these fintechs. My fair understanding is that a lot of lending partners do slightly above 5% or maybe above 5%, which is the mandated requirement of FLDG. The second is on the vehicle finance. If we can give out the split of a car finance, new car finance and used car finance, and the outlook for the industry as such and our own growth estimates there in FY 2025. These are my two questions. Thanks.
We do work with fintechs broadly, but we have not exactly sat and calculated or put out how much, who's doing how much and all that. But, but let me say broadly, it's growing. We are very conscious that on the personal loan front, personal loan meaning, basically unsecured, personal loan given, our model is largely lending to, lending to salaried people who want to take personal credit, typically term loans.
So in that model, I think things are running pretty well for us. Some originated through partners, some originated by ourselves, some originated through DSAs et cetera, et cetera. Second question is about vehicle finance. New, I'd say we have more on the used car financing side than the new car side, though we also do new cars.
But, you know, new cars have no margin, and it's just a waste of time and money, so we give it only to our customers. Our customers who come to our branches and, you know, our, our base, we lend, we give new cars. You know, we, with the limited capital, we try to use it for either two-wheeler finance or for used cars.
Thank you.
Credit quality, they're being so fantastic, so why waste money on the new cars?
Right. Thank you for that. If I can just squeeze in one last question in terms of fintechs. When we onboard a customer onto our balance sheet, when we are taking the risk, that customer permanently becomes ours? What I mean by that is that, once it's onboarded to our balance sheet, it's only we who own the customer in terms of any kind of cross-sell, up-sell of non-credit products, or the fintech through which it was originated can also do any kind of cross-sell, up-sell as well?
Okay, this is the typical complication that happens in this industry. So, typically, digital partners like to also do other things for the same customer. So, for example. But we are very clear when you work with them, that with anybody for that matter, that our bank is absolutely, one condition non-negotiable for us, is that we have full rights to access the customer, and we will do business with the customer. This is very important to us. It is a fundamental franchise issue.
Now, the same party, the same party originated with a, you know, stockbroking firm, which, you know, with this stockbroking, and by the way, gave us some personal loan. Well, I'm sure they'll do other things to the same customer as well.
Understood. So the status of the customer is transient and not permanently ours. Is that a fair understanding?
That's a fair understanding, yeah. But when we get our salary customers and we lend to them, we feel more in control because it's our customer 100%. But when it's originated by a party, sometimes party also does something with the customer. Yeah, of course.
Understood. Thank you so much. I'll come back and meet you. Thanks.
We should be respectful of their income and P&L also. Let them be happy. Let us be happy as long as customer is happy.
Understood. Thank you so much. I'll come back and meet you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Gao Zhixuan from Schonfeld. Please go ahead.
Hey, sir. Thanks so much for the opportunity. So first question is just data keeping, the growth and the net slippage number for this quarter.
Yeah. Slippage were, for the quarter, over INR 1,400 crore. If you see, it's broadly, flattish as in the previous quarter, and even if the net slippage is flattish, right, it's at around INR 850 crore for the current quarter.
Got it. So last quarter, we talked about there's some timing issues and one-offs in last quarter slippages. So, you know, is there any such issue that is repeating this quarter, or are we expecting, you know, slippage to be gradually trending up from here?
No. So we feel quite comfortable as Vaidya mentioned, that we are seeing a consistent asset quality, right? So even in this quarter, the slippages have not gone up, and the book is expanded. So we feel that we should be quite okay on this front.
Got it. So, why is our credit cost trending up while our. You know, if our slippage were similar to last quarter, you know, our credit cost should not be trending up, and our coverage ratio is similar to that from last quarter. So I just want to understand that.
No, sir. If you see that credit cost has been, for this nine months, has been just 1.26%, right? We had guided the market for 1.5%. Of course, we have been coming less. This quarter, we have seen a slight jump, right? But that's a combination of an existing book where you, as the aging happens, some more provisions come in. So, as you rightly said, the growth slippage, that has been quite stable, right? And other indicators also, like if you see the cheque bounce, right, which, we have presented the data in the presentation, that it continues to be lower, right? It's at, first cheque bounce is about 6.3%. Even the collection efficiency is quite stable, right? Over the quarter it's been 99.6.
So this talks of that the incremental book which is getting built is quite crispy, right? We may have, as I said, some of these provisioning impacts may come because of aging and so on. So, but we feel quite comfortable with.
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Yeah, I don't know I, I lost you guys on, at this moment, but, the point which I was trying to mention was that, gross slippage and net slippage has been quite stable. If you see the, asset quality indicators, right, in terms of our cheque bounce, right? That's down from 9.9% to 6.3%, right, over a period, and similarly, collection efficiency is quite stable for early buckets at 99.6%. So we feel quite sort of confident on the incremental assets which are getting generated.
As I said, some of these provisions could come in because of aging. There could be some smaller, lesser recoveries during the quarter. So that is precisely the impact which some of that impact, which has come during the current quarter. For the nine months, if you see the credit cost has been just 1.26%, and which is well below the guidance which we had given earlier. So we, we feel that things should normalize from here and should continue to stay. So of course, we are very cautious in terms of sourcing, in terms of credit underwriting and, and so on, so we'll continue to exercise prudence on this front.
Got it, sir. And the second question is on the guidance, and thanks so much for a very clear guidance too. Just wondering, you know, if I remember correctly, previously, you know, we were talking about next four to five years, 35% growth is quite sustainable. So I'm just wondering, our 20% growth kind of guidance now, is it just on a conservative basis, or you know, is there some, you know, changing strategy that we may be focused a little bit more on the profitability side, maybe slow down growth a little bit, or it's, you know, some other issue?
See, basically, when you look out, probably it's better to be guiding at a number which you feel is reasonably safe and in the bag. Now, does that answer your question?
Yeah, sure, that's all. Thank you, sir.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Nitin Aggarwal from Motilal Oswal. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, good evening. One question on CD ratio, while the bank has been doing well and the CD ratio has been coming down pretty consistently every quarter, and any discussions about this with the RBI, given the ongoing, like, media reports about this, and any near-term targets therefore that you have?
So if you see that we have been bringing down the CD ratio because deposits have been growing faster, right? Of course, we had legacy problems, right? That's why our CD ratio was 137% at merger, right? If you see even into this year so far, we have brought it down from 109% to 101%, and maybe by the end of the year, we will be lower than 100%. So we feel that a nd even in the guidance, if you see, our deposit growth is growing faster than the loan growth which we are guiding. So this should keep coming down as we sort of move along.
Okay. And, secondly, on.
So, I'm saying, just sorry, one data point, is the incremental CD ratio, if you see for this year, is about 80%, and for this quarter it was just 65%. So as long as our deposits continue to come strong, right, and we feel that we should be able to improve on this ratio. We feel quite confident of bringing it down.
Okay. Okay, sure. The second question is on the OpEx, wherein we are seeing a fair bit of an increase. If you can provide some color as to what are the key drivers within this number, so that we can better appreciate the operating leverage that is likely to play over the coming years and from Q4 25 that you have indicated.
So, Nitin, if you see that—looking at the guidance, because if you go to the, specifically go to the guidance, see, for you to really appreciate where this game is headed, you know, rather than the operating leverage numbers at a bank level that we've been seeing year-on-year, this year, let me say that, the operating leverage has not played out that much because we know there's digitization expenses and technology and, we are building a bank for the future.
And, that has been our consistent strategy, as you know, thus far. So therefore, we feel that from next year onwards, like I said, Q3, Q4 of 2025, we should see meaningful movement. And, you know, our own estimate is that the OpEx of 2025, for example, should just increase by about 20%, where the loan book or the income could rise by, let me say, maybe 24%-25% because of the reason. So we feel that in 2025 we should start seeing material opening of the door. And, again, because, see, one thing you should note in the way we are running the, or building this, building out story 2.0, that the deposit numbers we have kept very modest, the requirement. Imagine we're growing at 20% or 25%.
We used to growing at 40, 25, nothing. Remember, what is something unique will play out after 26 onwards, which is 2027, 2028, 2029. I'll tell you what is unique. Today, even when you're growing the loan book at 25 or 24.5, bank is funding the growth of 24.5 from deposits. As you know, we're not borrowing anymore, but funding it from deposits. Plus, we are repaying bonds pertaining to the pre-merger. We are carrying double burden.
You fund your asset and also pay the past liabilities. Now, by one and a half years from now, that lot of it would have gone away, let me say maybe two years. After that, you're only funding a loan book. For somebody who's used to carrying such heavyweight, that should be pretty lightweight actually for us, I mean, relatively lightweight. So that is the material change coming in our life from 2026 onwards, let me say '27 onwards to 2030. And, we've done the math. There is, there is a big relief in the requirement for deposits then. And actually, who knows? We might even cut deposit rates, and that might be positive for the bank.
Right. And.
Or we put lesser branches, you know? One of the two, if you give.
Yeah. And so, last question is on the Guidance 2.0, where you are giving guidances on very key metrics. But, when you look at the ROA of 1.9%-2% by 2029, what levels of margins and cost income ratios are you building in?
The cost income ratio, we're looking more like about 55% by the exit year of 2030. That will be like, maybe 67% to 58% or something like that by 2029.
Okay, and margins?
Margins, we are assuming similar stuff.
Okay. Okay. Well, the earnings is like implying a 30% target.
We request you to please rejoin the question queue for further questions.
Sure, I'm done. Thanks. Thanks so much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Sameer Bhise from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, thanks for the opportunity. Just wanted to get a sense on the others' portion of the loan book, which is roughly INR 15,000 crore and growing at a fast clip. What are they?
So this would include digital loans, portfolio which we have. We have given in the presentation that it includes digital loans, it includes some portfolio buyouts which we have done, and some revolving credit. So that's part of the others book.
Would this portion be secured or unsecured? I mean, in entirety.
Depending on what you're buying, no? But chances are we'll be buying the secured portfolios, up to the extent they'll buy out, and to the extent digital loans could be unsecured also.
Okay, this is helpful. And secondly, I think, in the opening remarks, Mr. Sudhanshu said that there's no impact of the AIF guidelines on the bank. Just wanted to reconfirm.
Yeah, that's correct. We have little impact on that count.
Okay, great. This is helpful and, congratulations on a good quarter, strong guidance. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Sameer.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rohan Mandora from Equirus Securities. Please go ahead.
Thanks, sir, for the opportunity. Just on that, guidance for FY 2029, what will be the normalized credit cost that we're assuming there? That's first, and secondly, what will be the losses that we are incurring currently on the credit card portfolio and on the branch liabilities piece right now?
Yeah, everything, all products are mixed up. When we announce a bank level or a credit cost of about 1%, you know, we guide for 1.5%-1.6%, actually, we are running more like 1%. But so current numbers include everything. We've not skipped over the product or product. But let me just say that the for the upcoming five years, we have assumed a little higher credit cost than what we are currently incurring, because there is one benefit we have been getting in our credit cost thus far. One is that, I mentioned earlier, you know, during COVID, there were charge-offs, and those, obviously, recovery is happening because you may charge off a loan, but it doesn't cost, you are collecting.
So that kind of a recovery has been coming to us last two years, and we believe that all those benefits will go away. And also, you know, we should be prepared for, you know, just for the sake of it, a slightly higher credit cost, mainly in the ecosystem, nothing to do about us. So we have given the slightly higher numbers than what we currently incur. At least when we've given this guidance, we reasonable, let's say.
Sure, sir. So this essentially means the ROA expansion is predominantly driven by improvement in the OpEx?
Yes.
The NIMs is flattish, and credit cost would marginally go up from current levels. Okay. On the question on credit card portfolio losses that we're incurring right now and the branch expenses?
I told you, you know, we are not calling out how much we lose in LAP or this or on used car. We're not giving product to product, but broadly, we, at a bank level, we are in a very, very good control. It's super low, and we. One second. Let's put the phone away and complete.
Yeah, I was saying on the operating losses in the credit card portfolio, yeah. Like we used to disclose earlier.
No, no, no. There was interruption on my side. My apologies. My mobile phone rang. So, I told you when we put out the numbers, we, we are, we are finding, we put our credit cost numbers at the, at the entire retail level and overall bank level, because some products, you have a good quarter, some products don't have a good quarter, some products have more slippage, something has less slippage, something has.
But you should look at a composite manner from quarter-to-quarter, but year, and year to year, and that number is trending very well. You know, last year, our credit cost was 116 basis points. You know, even in the year of COVID, just think for two minutes, I don't want to take you too much back in time. 2021, 2022. 2021, 2022 was the period of COVID second wave, that is, July, August, I think April, May, June of 2022.
Sorry, 2021. In that period, moratorium happened. Sorry, it did not happen, but lockdown happened. So obviously, Q1 was a, you know, provision was taken. But for the full year, provision to average book was only 2.51%. Just think, COVID year. So we feel that one of the best things that is happening to our bank is, that even in the worst period of COVID, our credit cost to average book was frankly among the best among the peers. You'd imagine for a book that is yielding a NIM of, you know, 6.3%-6.5%, you'd imagine 2.5% or maybe 2% even in normal conditions. In COVID, we had only 2.51.
Right.
And then the moment COVID vanished, that is, 2022, 2023, it came down to 1.17%. 2022, 2023 is 1.17%. This is super low. So we are very confident that we're underwriting good credit. Not confident, numbers are speaking for themselves. So but we believe it cannot stay this way all the time, so we have now factored for higher numbers.
Got it, sir.
Just to add to, specific to your question on credit card, definitely, economics have been improving there as we are building in more book, right? Cost to income, we have given our numbers, that was 164% as of the previous year, and we expect that to come down meaningfully to around 110% for this year. And so we have been guiding that we expect credit card to sort of break even into next year and be profitable in the year to follow. So we feel that it is some time, right? We have been just three years before when we had launched this product, so we feel that we are well on course on this book.
See, one thing we want to tell all of you, and we, you know, it's actually, but just share with all of you, that we have never let you down in credit cost and asset quality for, like, 14 years now. Anybody who's been with us in Capital First years will testify that we never had a credit problem. It's been 5 years, we haven't put one foot wrong on credit, not one foot wrong. Every year-on-year, NPA is good, year-on-year credit cost is low, it's been, like, 14 years. Now, we obviously, you know, such a long period of time comes from a disciplined underwriting processes, continuous tightening of the norms and revising the norms, continuously staying in the cutting edge of technology, good governance in terms of the number of people who inspect the portfolio.
So all these things, we have no intention to relax, and we, at least while we have mentally factored for a slightly higher credit cost, because we believe we should be generally pessimistic about these things, but, cautious about these things. But we have, we have not had a problem, and we'll, we'll ensure that we'll try our best to ensure that we don't give you any surprise on this part.
Sure, sir. So, sir, just lastly, to touch on one of the.
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Sure. Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Anand Bhavnani from White Oak Capital. Please go ahead.
Thank you for follow-up. First of all, congratulations for the strong deposit growth in such a challenging environment. A commendable job by the management. Sir, from a business model perspective, just wish to understand how much of the collections we do is outsourced?
It's increasingly becoming more and more digital and online, you know? There's a massive shift underway there. So when you say if you, largely you. The whole thing is changing. To give you one very simple idea for you to understand, earlier, if a customer bounced a cheque, we had a call center call the customer and request the customer to pay, and some agent would go and collect the money from the customer.
Now, it's not like that. Now, you do lot of analytics and technology that happen. Calling itself is not necessarily done by human being. The calling is probably done by a bot, and the bot will take some promise, and then the bot will send a link to the customer saying that, "You know, you promised to pay me, here's a link for you to pay." And customer just pays from the link, and the bank gets the money. So a lot of, and these are what I'm telling, sharing, is the real situation, by the way. So the bank is a very digitized bank, and we are able to do such massive progress.
Sure. I specifically want to understand the outsourced collection cost. So if I were to look at the nine-month total other operating expenses, it's around INR 8,200 crore. Approximately, how much would be the cost we pay out of the INR 8,200 crore to outsource collection agencies?
Yeah, I don't think we know the number offhand, nor have we put it out. But broadly speaking, directionally, let me tell you that my previous answer was that we're trying to become a more direct-to-consumer bank. But of course, we do have agencies. Obviously, customers who don't pay through our digital methods, someone has to visit the customer, chase them down and follow them up at PTP after PTP, all that work goes on. And by the way, a lot of our collections in rural areas happens directly by our own employees, not even the agents. Just for your information, many locations we don't use agents in rural India. There are many products in which the early bucket collection done by employees themselves, where customers are not.
So all that comes to cost of a bank.
Thank you. All the best.
Thank you. Thank you, Anand.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jai Mundra from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir, good evening. Thanks for the presentation and the slide on guidance. I just one question that you earlier had a guidance of, you know, 65% cost to income by FY 2025 and 1.4%-1.6% ROA by FY 2025. Does that still hold both these things or, you know, or how should one look at it?
It'll be. First of all, we'll keep the slides out there so that we don't want to, because we've given Guidance 2.0, we don't want to escape from the Guidance 1.0 . So just to share with you that we will be true to that guidance. True to guidance, we'll retain the guidance. God knows how we'll perform against it, but we will retain the guidance, for sure. We'll keep it publicly out for you till the last day. That's our commitment. Now, second part of your question about how we're going to perform against that, you know, the cost income ratio, I think we are a little behind what we set out to do.
The good news is, let me tell you one countervailing factor for being behind schedule. Supposing we are at 65 and we turn out to be 68, I'm just making up a number, but I could broadly be right, let me put it like that. So let me just say that we are behind, to be, just to be straightforward with you. Now, how does this play out? What plays out is that income line turns out to be higher than what we guided, even though we guided for 5.5, now we're delivering 6.3. So we are already delivering about 1.3% more on income. So even if your cost income is higher, your ROA may still. You get there. Are you with me on the mathematics?
Yes. Yes, sir.
Therefore, we, if you notice, therefore, the way we look at it is that, you know, composition of book changed, model slightly turned out a bit different than what we initially planned, you know, that too, when you get a balance 1.2, we only have visibility, all that. But broadly, give or take, we are in zone. We are going to be in zone of meeting our, you know, deposit numbers. We are in the zone of meeting our loan numbers. Let me say, our asset quality numbers, capital adequacy numbers. We are hitting all the buttons, all the marks. We may not meet, they're not, let me use a more accurate word. We don't expect to meet exactly the cost income numbers, but because the equation I told you right now, we may still meet the ROA at the lower end of the ROA mark by that time.
Understood, sir. And does the ROA mark is of course, I mean, we would be, we would be, you know, I mean, this of course assumes capital raised at a frequent level, as you will still be growing at a much faster pace. So is this ROA is a more normalized kind of an ROA, assume that one should see?
No, no, no. You'll be a little surprised about how the game will change. Because what's happening is that we believe that from 2025, 2026, as it is, I told you Q3, Q4 of 2025, we do expect a positive momentum cost-income ratio, definitely, and improvement in ROA, ROA. Okay? Just take that as our sense as of now. When we move forward into 2026, now remember, we are talking of a loan book of only 20%. We're talking about deposit growth of only 25%. So our need for investing OpEx is going to be much lesser than before. The first five years, we are in a complete build-out stage. We had no choice.
We were racing against time, back against the wall, huge deposit, a huge amount of big, big deposits, corporate deposits, specific deposits, bonds to pay back. It was like, it was really tough. It's not really that tough now. So our expense requirement will be lesser. So 2026 over 2025, that will be our expense requirement will be, the expense growth will not be very much. 2027 or 2026, expense growth will be even lesser. So basically, and also by the time bonds will be paid back, need for money will be much lesser. So we feel that, like I said earlier, things will get easier for us from that point of view.
Life is never easy, God knows what new problems will come, but at least, this, this, on this front of deposit raising, et cetera, we feel much more assured now.
Sure. Understood, sir. Thank you so much, and all the best.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Manish Shukla from Axis Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good evening, and thank you for the opportunity. If I look at your sequential growth in assets or loans, it is one of the slowest in the last eight to 10 quarters. Anything particular to read into this, for the quarter?
No, we want to keep our asset growth, you know, within a zone where our capital, the capital adequacy and our credit deposit issues that are all good. So when we have excess, we do IBPC and take them off the books. So some of them.
If I look at it, your sequential moderation seems to be driven more by home loans and LAP rather than other products.
IBPC, we do, sometimes we do IBPC, sometimes we do assignments, meaning direct assignments with other banks also. Then basically, we are clear that we don't want to grow the loan book too much even now. So, so we are, we, we have, you know, taken out some of these loans and done IBPC, Inter-Bank Participation, with other banks purchase these loans off from us.
Understood. Specifically on personal loans and credit cards, any change of strategy since RBI regulations on risk-weighted assets?
No change in strategy. Fundamentally, they are phenomenal, you know, they're good, they are phenomenal products in the sense that there's a real customer need. Asset quality is good. They're all cash flow analyzed. There is congestion, they may go to terms. And they are sure at a value accretive. Fundamentally nothing. But yes, what we have done is we increased interest rates on these products because cost of, you know, equity has gone up.
Okay, sure. Last question for me, the 25%-20% loan growth over the next five years, right? Is it likely, taken-
20%.
Yeah, 20% CAGR compared to the current growth of 25.
Correct.
Is it likely to be a step function now or more a glide path, in the sense that you grow more in front end and back years, as balance sheet becomes bigger, you grow slower? How should one think about it?
As you know, you know, when you look five years ahead, you can't, you know, we can't be sitting and taking judgments on these step function jumps, what happens five years from now. So to be more fair and reasonable, what we have done is we have just extrapolated at 20/20/20/20, like five years, something like that. So we've not, we've not tried, we've not done step up, step down. We have not complicated it.
Got it. Thank you. Those are my questions.
And frankly, frankly, in this country, even large banks, forget, our loan book is hardly anything, INR 180,000 to 190,000 crore. Even large banks having INR 1,000,000 crore, banks having INR 1,500,000 crore, INR 2,000,000 crore, they're all going 20%. So really, 20% is nothing. Frankly, 20% is nothing. It just happens. And we have to do nothing crazy for that. In fact, we're doing 25% with good asset quality. Imagine if you have 20, we need to, we can in fact trim some of our further cut out the edge customers and further improve asset quality. So 20% is nothing, trust me. We don't feel there's any stress at all going below book of 20.
Sure, fair point. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Raghu Garimella from Travis Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, my question has been answered. I'm sorry. You can give the next one.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will take that as a last question. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Jai Mundra for closing comments. Over to you, sir.
Yeah, hi. Sir, just a small clarification. I think, it looks a bit confusing, so just for the benefit of all, if you can clarify that, you know, what we have done is we are growing at a much faster pace at around 25, and I think that was the more or less understanding given to the participants. And now we have unveiled the new strategy, new guidance, which talks about 20% CAGR. So is this going to be the new normal, or you think because of conservatism, you know, forecasting five-year out, you have given the 20% range? I mean, that is the clarification I think that is needed.
No, I appreciate the question. It's a very good question. We, It's our job to clarify this. See, this thing about 25, the current growth, it's not that next quarter is gonna come to 20. It won't happen. There's no such plan that, "Oh, my God, we have to apply brakes." There's no such need. But, yeah, I mean, if you wake up in FY 2025 and see the book growth, then you will- you might see that the bank loan book growth is growing only by 20. It's possible, because we are planning to slow down the stuff, because we feel that the pressure on the. Or maybe could be on 21 or 22, somewhere in that zone. You know, I can't pinpoint to the last decimal, but somewhere in the zone. Think about it like that, we are.
There's a reason for this. There are two reasons. One is it puts, of course, eases a lot of the requirement on the deposit side, and we need to put less branches, we could even cut rates. So you know, things happen there, there. Two is that, in an era when everything's looking so fantastic on credit cost front, we do want to warn ourselves again and again here, trim off the edge, you know, the bottom. And for example, if your bureau, if your score for letting a customer in, let's make it up, I don't mean bureau score, I mean internal score. Suppose it's a score of 750 and there's a cutoff, you might say, "Okay, let's move 750 to 780," so that the marginal customer goes away.
So we might tighten credit or, you know, all that kind of stuff. So the intention is more to slow this down in a way where on a sustainable basis, this can compound for a long period of time. I know you might be a little disappointed, 20 after, you know, I don't know if you're disappointed or not. You may be, I don't blame you for that. But trust me, you know, even at 20 for compounded for a long period of time, especially when the operating leverage will open out from there and our OpEx requirement will be lesser, it may actually be a good strategy, more sustainable strategy, and, you know, like that. For now, we have assumed this strategy.
We could be slightly higher, God knows, maybe slightly lower, but in, think of us in that, in that range, that's the intention at this point of time. Does that answer your question, beyond?
Yeah, yeah. No, that. No, no, that answers, that answers very well. So, yeah, so, that is all, sir. If you want to have any closing comments, yeah.
No, the closing comment really I wanted from you only, you can be honest with, with me. Are you, b ecause, are you disappointed about the 20, or are you okay with it? What would you think would be the feel of the house?
No, no, sir, it is not about just being happy or disappointing. As you said, you are clearly right that if you want to. Let's say, if this helps you in maybe more better filtering of the marginal customer, that is one, and of course it will ease off some pressure on the deposits. It looks like that at the system level, you know, it looks like that could be the, let's say, a narrative built up that suggests that, you know, RBI or at system level, you know, there are, I mean, the system level, the growth needs to be, needs to be calibrated a little bit. So I think that is in that direction, but, nonetheless,
You could say that. To be honest, you could say that also, because there is a, you know, message from the regulator also to curb, you know, exuberance. And you could hear, you know, public comments on this, that, and, you know, exuberance does build up in good times, so we do think seriously about that. So these are time to cut, trim the marginal customers, and the slowing down from 25 to 20 also helps in that process. So it is a more stable story. I hope even if you're disappointed, hopefully you'll become a convert, after some time of our line of thinking.
Sure, sir. Yeah, that is all from our side, participants. Thank you so much for joining. And thank you, management, for giving us the opportunity to host the call.
Thank you.
Thank you. On behalf of ICICI Securities, that concludes this conference. Thank you all for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.