Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the AU Small Finance Bank Q2 FY 2022 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the 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. Aseem Bansal, Vice President, Investor Relations, AU Small Finance Bank. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Ruchita. Good day to everyone, and welcome to AU Bank's earnings call for the second quarter of FY 2022. We thank you all for joining the call today, and we hope you and your dear ones are safe and well. For approximately the first 25-30 minutes of the call, we will have few brief remarks by few members of our senior management, followed by 30-45 minutes of Q&A.
Firstly, we will have our MD and CEO, Mr. Sanjay Agarwal, share his thoughts on the performance and overall outlook for the bank. He will be followed by our ED, Mr. Uttam Tibrewal, who will share his narrative on the business outlook and asset strategy. Mr. Vivek Tripathi, Head of Commercial Banking, will discuss asset quality for the bank. Finally, Mr. Rishi Dhariwal, Group Head of Branch Banking, will discuss liabilities and branch banking.
Besides them and the IR team, we also have a few other members of our senior management to answer any other questions you might have. For the benefit of everyone, we would humbly request that the number of questions per participant be restricted to a maximum of two and to join back in the queue or mail us in case you have any further questions. With that, I'll request our MD and CEO, Mr. Sanjay Agarwal, to share his thoughts on the bank's performance and outlook.
Yeah. Thank you, Aseem. Good morning, everyone. Namaskar. Thank you for joining. We hope that you and your dear ones are doing well and keeping safe. Let me start on an encouraging note that last quarter was one of the most healthy, happy, and hopeful quarters in the series of last six around the pandemic. It was promising and action-oriented.
The economy, both micro and macro, capital markets, liquidity, vaccination drive, drop in the active COVID cases, business continuity, confidence, hopefulness, entrepreneurship, everything kept the whole environment very, very upbeat. This time, the energy was vibrant and the feel was very high, which we haven't seen in last two, three years. People are now coming out and looking forward to rebuilding themselves and their businesses. We could see a lot of progressive approach in every aspect. Demand across businesses looks strong, especially in the wheels and home loans.
Businesses have also started looking for capacity expansion, and a good trust decision should further boost sentiments. Government expenditure and infrastructure contracts will also boost downstream demand as local level contractors and subcontractors start looking for bank guarantees and funding facilities. Similarly, the green shoots are visible in metals and mining, pharma and biotech, as well as agri-processing projects, which is expected to boost demand for smaller MSME suppliers and retailers.
Barring any severe lockdowns, we hope to have a better demand visibility in next couple of quarters. We, as a bank, have capitalized on the opportunities offered in last quarter. It begins from improving the asset quality significantly by achieving NPA reduction from 4.3% to 3.2%, that too, without any write-offs. The collection efficiency trends seen in June 2021 continued in Q2 as well, leading to a higher than expected asset quality performance.
To further strengthen the balance sheet, we have used the provision released due to reduction in GNPA to buffer up the contingency provisions amounting to INR 110 crore. We stood beside our customer with a solution-focused approach and provided necessary support after understanding each customer's business situation.
We appreciate the customer's intention to pay us as normalcy returned, and would also like to acknowledge the phenomenal dedication and commitment displayed by our team as well. Other data points also demonstrate similar trends. During quarter two, we grew deposits by 45% year-on-year, reduced our cost of funds by 89 basis point year-on-year. CASA ratio touched 30%. The disbursement increased by 57% and AUM by 24%, on a year-on-year basis, and the yield on AUM was 13.7%. The growth in every asset vertical has achieved our desired expectations.
Our balance sheet size grew by 21% and net worth grew by 38% year-over-year, and our capital adequacy is at around 20%, very comfortable. Our liquidity position continues to be quite strong, with LCR of 115% during the quarter. Hiring, distribution and franchise building all remain in line. Close to 3,000 employees joined us in this quarter.
We have launched 53 new branches in this quarter. We are now serving 21 lakh-plus customers as the largest small finance bank and are offering over 30+ products at 800+ banking touchpoints across 15 states and 2 union territories with a team of 23,000+ employees. We continue to believe that India is at the cusp of digital revolution in banking.
To be relevant in the coming years, the bank is investing in building advanced tech capabilities. Our digital output remain progressive, whether it's our super app 0101 , video banking, our payment channels through UPI, credit card, POS, QR code. With more than six lakhs pre-approved offers already extended, we are using advanced analytics to deepen our relationship with the customers based on hyper-personalization of offers. All cylinders are firing, and I personally believe that if an Indian economy remains north of 7% for next few years, then all these properties will give us a lot of support for building the largest digital franchise of this country.
Further in this quarter, we launched our first mega campaign, BADLAAV Humse Hai, and we are witnessing amazing results such as higher brand recall value leading to increased footfall in the branches, increase in engagement of digital properties, whether it's website or app registration. The energy of our team has accelerated the momentum. We remain very excited in how we are progressing on our journey to be a tech-led bank.
Even as we continue to invest in people, new products, digital ecosystem, and brand building to become a strong and sustainable bank of the future, our ROA and ROE for the half year stood at 1.8 and 14.5 respectively, which is a reflection of our strong and differentiated business model. We all know that we are building a unique form of Robin Hood model by garnering deposits from urban markets and disbursing in core markets.
74% of our liability comes from urban markets, and 65% of our lending happens in rural market. Our purpose of being an SFB guide us and drive us every day. Continuing our legacy, we have exceeded the requirement of key licensing guidelines with 86% loans to priority sector, 66% loans with ticket size less than INR 25 lakh, and 30% of touchpoint present at unbanked rural centers.
The inclusion of the trader segment under MSME classification ensures continuous flow of credit to them at competitive price by retaining their PSL status with the bank. I'm really thankful to government for this. Our commitment to financial and digital inclusion remains unwavering. As we move forward, I also welcome Deloitte and Jayant Kapadia as our new statutory auditors after eight years of distinguished service by S.R. Batliboi. We are very thankful to their team.
I would also like to conclude by saying that our strategy is well-defined and well-executed, and it has been developed over the last two decades. As of now, we are focusing on four products, wealth, HBL, home loan, and Commercial Banking. The entire team is well-situated and has good vintage.
In terms of our liability strategy, we are focusing on to raise low-cost stable money. For that, we are developing all the means in terms of product, processes, people, payments, digital, brand, distribution, and building trust since the start of the bank. We are working on all those things with lot of focus, and it continues to remain our prime job. We are very hopeful that our inputs will get us to the desired results. As we speak today, we are gearing up for the festive season.
Last quarter was better than the previous one, and we hope that coming months will be better both in terms of lives and livelihood. We still choose to remain optimistic, but with lot of cautious approach. It has been wonderful four and a half years. However, we are still new in this journey of building the bank, and may take some more time to understand every dimension of the banking platform. As promised last time, we continue working towards our communication, and I just want to assure everyone that we are adhering to the gold standard in the governance and the compliance, and we keep improving there, you know. Thank you so much.
I wish you all a very happy Diwali and festive season, and also really want to thank the regulators and the government to handle this whole situation so well that there is more hope in for the coming years. Thank you so much. I hand over to Uttam Tibrewal for business outlook and assets.
Thank you, Sanjay. Namaskar. Good morning, everyone. I hope all of you are safe and healthy. Last quarter was one of detailing, hard work, activity and excitement. The team had to do a fine balance between managing customers, ensuring collections, and asset quality, while also focusing on growth and competition. I'm happy to report that with our on-ground connect and support from our customers, our disbursements for the quarter was at INR 5,135 crore, up by 57% year-on-year.
Our GNPA reduced by 615 basis points over last quarter to 3.16% as on 30 September 2021. The improvement in customer cash flows, availability of digital resources, and empowerment to take decisions on the ground allowed us to see resolution of more than 37% of the gross NPAs in one single quarter.
Despite rapidly falling COVID cases across India, some customers were indecisive about this possible third wave on the horizon. However, businesses are now more positive about future outcomes with customer footfall reaching pre-COVID levels. With ongoing festive season, we expect even stronger loan demand in the coming months. In the most impacted segments during COVID pandemic like commercial passenger, tourism and travel, education, hospitality, et cetera, are starting to open up and showing signs of revival.
Domestic tourism is almost normalized, while schools and colleges are opening in a phased manner. I remain enthused around the possibility of our all asset businesses in the post-pandemic world, and I'm happy to share some key insights and updates on each of our five key priority businesses. First of all, our wheels business.
In the quarter gone by, Wheels team used their collective experience to produce a fantastic result on the collection front leading to 160 basis point reductions in GNPA within one quarter, taking our GNPA to this book to 0.3%. Second quarter also saw strong revival in the demand in both new and used vehicle segment, leading to our disbursement rising by 86% year-on-year to INR 1,906 crore during Q2 of 2022, supported by low base effect and strong rebound in demand for second wave. Our loan has reached INR 40,280 crore across 6.5 lakh vehicles, with 52% book being under personal segment and average LTV of 80%.
While the auto industry continues to witness pressure led by supply chain constraints, semiconductor shortage, low inventory levels at dealerships, we believe the near-term outlook for personal and commercial vehicles will remain strong despite the same factors. The formalization of used vehicle industry is a big opportunity.
I would like to highlight three industry research points to substantiate. In the next four-five years, the ratio of sales of used cars to new cars is expected to reach two to one from current 1.5 to 1. Similarly, the share of organized players in used vehicle sales is expected to increase from current 25% to 45% in the coming years. AU Bank is well-positioned to capitalize on this opportunity by actively engaging with both online and offline used car businesses.
We have increased our focus on this segment, forming separate sales team and building a rather stronger distribution network of over 3,000 used car dealers and their associations. Our new vehicles to used vehicles ratio has now reached 62%-38%, and over time, we see this ratio nearing 50-50. We continue to watch our positive electric vehicle space as well. Moving on to our SBL business. SBL has now become our largest business with AUM of INR 40,378 crore, across 1.5 lakh MSME businesses, and has remained one of our most stable and resilient businesses. In the current quarter, we saw the NPA reducing to 3.14%, a reversal of around six basis points in one quarter.
It remains a highly granular book with average ticket size of INR 10 lakhs and average LTV of 50% across well-diversified businesses with no dominant segment or profile. On the demand side, we saw some good demand in certain categories like FMCG, retail traders, et cetera, while green shoots were visible in other impacted segments.
The total assessments for the quarter was at INR 978 crores, down by 7% on a year-on-year basis as we continue to select customers with caution. Simultaneously, we did see growth in states like MP, Punjab, Himachal and Haryana giving us a better Q3 outlook. During the quarter, we also remained cautious in our underwriting assessment and kept the seasoning of 900 cases at high levels with very limited balance transfer cases.
The reduction in activity levels, opening up of education sector, the upcoming marriage season in North India and the destocking during ongoing festival season, we expect demand to pick up in the H2 of the financial year. Our SBL team is all charged up and remains well-geared up to capture this demand.
With our digital onboarding solutions well tested and our capacities well built out, in the absence of any significant lockdown, we are quite hopeful of a strong SBL business in H2 of FY 2022. Moving on to our housing finance business. With around three years of building the housing vertical at the banking platform, the total AUM in housing vertical has reached INR 11,690 crores across 13,000 loan units. The portfolio comprising 80% home loans and 20% non-housing loans like lap and top-up loans.
Our disbursements in Q2 of FY 2022 was at INR 378 crores, against disbursement of INR 50 crores in Q1 of FY 2022, and total disbursement of INR 107 crores in H1 of FY 2021. Finally, changes in underwriting criteria led to capture a good set of customers, thereby creating a quality portfolio with only 84 cases of NPA amounting to 0.6% of GNPA in the HL business. The average ticket size in this book is INR 11 lakhs, whereas the average LTV remained at 52% as on 31 December 2021. Reverse migration caused by the rise of the remote working culture has led to the heightened demand for homes in Tier One and Tier Two cities.
Between low housing finance rates, stagnant property prices and government focus on housing for all, the affordable housing market is expected to continue and attract serious home buyers. With our reducing cost of funds, we have also launched an elite scheme targeting better credit profile customers and remain well-placed to leverage new locations and markets going ahead.
Moving on to our commercial banking business. Our two main businesses on commercial banking platform are business banking and agri banking, which are balance sheet-based lending, where we compete with mainstream banks and have gradually built a gross advance book of about INR 3,269 crores. In these two businesses, across 6,000+ MSME and agri businesses performing resiliently during the pandemic with GNPA at 0.6%.
Both these businesses provide strong fee opportunity in the form of non-fund-based lending and transition banking. During the quarter, the disbursement in these businesses was at INR 778 crore, growing by 130% on year-on-year basis. We will continue to grow this segment by focusing on providing best-in-class banking solutions to MSME, combining working capital, current account, payment account, and transition banking solutions.
We were the first SFB and probably among the few banks to launch our own credit card in the first four years of their journey and have started seeing some traction with our issuance of reaching 50,000+ credit cards to date. The entire layout and foundation of the product right from conceptualization to launching was undertaken during COVID-19 period, and we expect to see these businesses grow rapidly over near to medium time.
Our merchant acquisition and engagement strategy is also shaping up well with deployment of 200,000+ UPI QR codes with associated transaction-based lending. To conclude, we have been sailing against the wind for the last 18 months. The bank has used this time to focus on building our capabilities and capacities, strengthening our leadership team, generalizing our liability franchise, launching products like credit card and UPI QR, integrating technology in our product journey, and focusing on launching digital properties like AU 0101 and video banking.
We believe we have the right technology and platforms with fundamental leadership positions across collections, disbursement, branching, and team alignment. As Indian economy is gearing up for a speedy recovery, given our vintage product alignment, execution capability, and our digital outlet, AU Bank is fully equipped and ready to be in the top quartile to take advantage of that recovery. I'm personally very excited to make this business and look forward to sharing more with you in coming quarters. With this outlook, I now invite my colleague, Vivek Tripathi, to share our view on the asset quality of these businesses. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you, Krishna. Hi, good morning, everyone. I'll be sharing a brief perspective on the asset quality. We saw lingering effect of COVID on most of the businesses saw increased activity during the quarter, which resulted in a better cash flow. We saw collection efficiency sustaining to the June and July level in the entire quarter. The collection efficiency and customer activation numbers of Q2 are in line with pre-COVID levels. The average collection efficiency in Q2 is at 109% compared to 101% in Q1.
Customer activation also remained stable at 91% in September compared to 92% in June. Our gross NPA reduced by 115 basis points from 4.31% in Q1 to 3.16% in Q2. The net NPA number also reduced from 2.26% in Q1 to 1.65% in Q2. The sequential improvement in terms of economic activity, borrower connect, business continuity, the overall confidence in the operating environment, and there's more visibility in the cash flows of customers. Therefore, customers are forthcoming for resolution. However, we continue to remain cautiously optimistic as there is still little uncertainty on the third wave.
We have witnessed around 67% activation in the NPA book, which was there on 30th June during the Q2, where customers have either done repayment or have, you know, surrendered the security. As a result of this, we saw 37% resolution in the overall NPA book. Here, it is important to note that more than 80% resolution happened due to repayment, while residual 18, almost about 18% of resolution happened on account of security disposal.
Further, we have security in hand for almost 10% of our NPA book. It may be noted that so far Bank has not done any write-off. However, we shall start cleaning the book going forward based on the recoverability on account to account basis. On restructuring part, Bank has done INR 80 crore of incremental restructuring in Q2, which is 0.2% of our gross advances.
As of 30 September, the bank had a total of INR 1,302 crore of standard restructured assets, which represents 3.6% of our gross advances. Out of this pool, billing has started for 48% of restructured book, wherein 14% of the book is NPA as of 30 September. As we anticipated, this improvement was around 30% in Q1. As of now, it remains within the comfortable limit of that. During the quarter, INR 57 crore of NPA was added and INR 48 crore were resolved in the restructured book with net increase of only INR 9 crore and closing NPA of restructured book stand at INR 99 crore.
On our overall book, if you look at the composition as of 30th September, 50% of book now originated before March and 50% of book was originated before March or after March only. The pre-March 2020 book is 92% current and currently contributes only 5% of NPA and 2% of restructured assets.
The overall resilience of our entire book has validated the approach of underwriting and customer segment we gathered. On moratorium book, as on 30th September, we had outstanding moratorium book of INR 4,500 crores, which is contributing to 76% of NPA and 70% of restructured assets. However, 43% of this book is current and another 27% in the first and second buckets. Therefore, we expect minimal slippages, further slippages from this book.
On ECLGS, our bank has done cumulative ECLGS resolution of INR 98 crore, out of which INR 87 crore was done in Q2. As on 30th September, bank had total of INR 887 crore of ECLGS book, which is 78% current and with 1.1% of NPA. We do not see any significant difference in the asset performance of ECLGS book because we are a normal book. During the quarter, INR 4 crore NPA was added, while INR 55 crore were resolved in ECLGS book with net reduction of INR 1 crore with closing NPA of ECLGS book of INR 10 crore.
On the provisioning coverage, bank is carrying a provision of INR 560 crore against the NPA of INR 1,121 crore with PCR of 49% and provision of INR 213 crore against restructured assets of INR 1,302 crore. The bank has utilized the entire provision reversal net of repo losses of INR 110 crore to increase the contingency provision to 300 crore.
The contingency provision now stands at 84 basis points of loan book, which further strengthens the balance sheet and makes us better prepared for any unforeseen event. As you will be aware, our loans are granular, secured, primarily for income generation, coupled with our strong on-ground connect and ability helps in faster recovery. Also, in-house loan sourcing and collection helps in underwriting and providing flexibility in aligning solutions based on the situation.
Keeping appropriate factors in mind as well as NPA resolution movement of Q1, with 80% resolution being driven by repayment and re-repo loss rate remains broadly stable versus historical levels, we feel confident that PCR of 49% is quite likely to be more than sufficient to cover any credit loss arising from this portfolio.
With regards to restructured books, as mentioned earlier, the slippages trends so far are within the anticipated level, and the 16% coverage against the pool looks sufficient. Further, over and above this, the bank also carrying contingent provision of INR 300 crore for any unforeseen risk in the future. Now, I would like to request Mr. Rishi Dhariwal to give update on performance of branch banking.
Thank you, Vivek, and good morning, everyone. The launch of our BADLAAV Humse Hai campaign with Aamir and Kiara has done wonders for the retail branch banking business. It has helped enhance our brand acceptability and recall in people's minds, thereby boosting customer acquisitions. Our digital banking platform, AU 0101 super app, has made significant strides since its launch in the last quarter, enabling a seamless banking experience for our customers. Over the last four years, the branch banking business and liabilities have matured substantially, making continual improvements to build predictable, stable and scalable franchise. To begin with, I'll provide the overall business highlights.
Our overall savings deposit book has grown by approximately 26% quarter-over-quarter from INR 8,102 crore in Q1 to INR 10,228 crore in Q2 FY 2022, and 138% year-over-year from INR 4,096 crore in Q2 FY 2021 to INR 10,228 crore in Q2 FY 2022. About 5.8 lakh customers are digitally active, and going forward, we aim to ramp up this further. The current accounts book grew 13% in the quarter from INR 1,387 crore in Q1 to INR 1,600 crore in Q2 FY 2022, and by 54% year-over-year from INR 1,041 crore in Q2 FY 2021 to INR 1,600 crore in Q2 FY 2022.
More than 200,000 customers have been equipped with QR and over 8,000 with POS, allowing the bank to get better balances in their accounts with us, monitor transactions, and present suitable products and services to our customers based on the same. We have been able to improve our CASA ratio consistently over the last few quarters. As of September 2021, our CASA ratio is 30% compared to 26% in June 2021, 23% in March 2021, and 20% in September 2020. Improving our CASA balances and optimum pricing on our savings and deposits will help us to reduce the overall cost of our deposits over a period of time. We activated almost 77,000 debit cards in the quarter.
10 lakh transactions amounting to INR 267 crore in value were done by customers during the quarter using our debit cards. Our newly launched credit cards have been a game changer. We issued 30,000 credit cards during the quarter. 300,000 transactions were done amounting to INR 120 crore in value.
Also, about 84% of our credit card customers are ETB, with 70-30 mix of liabilities and asset customers. Our partnership with ICICI Prudential and Future Generali for life insurance and Aditya Birla Health Insurance and Care Health Insurance have enabled us to sell more than 10,300 policies in the quarter, with increasing ticket size, which is indicative of better customer profile. We have around 23,700 customers who invest in SIPs through us.
Because of our well integrated mutual fund and broking services on the AU 0101 app and our focus to grow our investment segment, we expect engagement with customers through these products to improve as we grow. We also have more than 43,800 three-in-one broking accounts through our partnership with Motilal Oswal Financial Services. I will now talk about our medium-term priorities. Our focus on acquisitions and activation in the past has resulted in acquisition of 15 lakh, or of over 15 lakh savings accounts and 1.3 lakh current accounts. As we had shared last quarter also, we are taking measures to boost engagement and deepen relationships to establish sticky long-term customer base.
To this end, we are equipped with various attachment products and services, mainly debit card, eCom and POS activation, UPI, bill payments and FASTag, Royale and Platinum products for savings and AU PAR current accounts, for current account customers, SIP, three-in-one, asset products, life and health insurance products, et cetera, to build customer engagement.
These initiatives have resulted in 49.1% of the customers regularly transacting with us with 20 transactions on average per transacting customer. Furthermore, more than 60% of liabilities customers use two or more of our products. We continue to invest in building relationship management to cater to the needs of customers and focus on the customer lifetime value. With our attention on family banking, we continue to organically drive new acquisitions through referrals of friends and family.
We have equipped our sales team with digital tools and gamified performance tracking for better sales experience, and we continually utilize analytics to understand our customers better. In terms of physical distribution, we have a well-oiled system in semi-urban regions which we will continue to operate. Our growth in liabilities will be driven by metros and urban markets. We have launched 26 new liability branches in the quarter, 25 in urban markets and one in rural, in the core markets, bolstering our focus to grow the customer base in urban markets. We are optimizing the size of our branches to maximize productivity per sq ft of a branch, taking into consideration the shift towards digital banking.
In terms of our digital initiatives, we had over 8 lakh registered users on our AU 0101 super app as of September 2021, and it's growing. We opened more than 28,000 accounts via digital route using AU 0101 app and video banking during the quarter. The number of transactions on the app have been steadily increasing, with 28 lakh+ transactions recorded during the quarter. In August, we launched a digital savings account, a no minimum balance account designed to provide instant banking facility to digital customers. During the BADLAAV Humse Hai campaign, the bank rolled out a series of offers on platforms such as BigBasket, JioMart, Domino's, MakeMyTrip, and many more.
These offers nudge the customers to increase their balances with their accounts with AU Bank and is an important initiative to get the customers to engage with us. In conclusion, our targeted efforts on customer engagement, optimizing physical distribution, and developing people capabilities along with the BADLAAV Humse Hai campaign have provided the bank with the much needed momentum to scale liability, retain liabilities on the platform created over the last four years. Thank you. Rutuja, we can maybe start the questions now.
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 the touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to limit the questions to two per participant and use answers 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 Antariksha Banerjee from ICICI Prudential Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning, sir. Can you hear me?
Yes. Yes.
Yeah, sure. Sir, I have two sets of questions. First is of the 3,000 employees that you have added this quarter that you mentioned, can you tell us a rough split between how much was in collections and how much was in business or maybe in digital? And on the total stock of employees also, what would be the rough split between collections and business and how that has changed over the last one year? Because I'm sure collections would have been much more important over the last one year.
That's the first set. And the second is on your core customer segment, right, given the level of fuel price hikes that we have seen, how do you think the cash flows are impacted? At least ground checks suggest that the tariff hikes have not kept pace with the rate at which the fuel prices are growing. Is that an impairment of cash flows or do you think that as recovery happens, the cash flows are still growing and if so, why?
The first data, you know, which is around HR, you know, I can give you the, a little bit of overall composition of team. You know, we are having around 23,000+ people, in which we have around maybe 30% sales force, you know, around 10% collection force. Other than that, you know, people are in different, maybe around another 20% are in the front-end job like, you know, credit operation and all those things, right? Specifically, if you want to ask it we haven't hired specific people for collections because we have built our capacity for every function, you know, way back.
You know, we were actually building our team from last, maybe now 12-15 month period. This all hiring done this quarter was a normal kind of hiring where we'd have hired people on front jobs, back-end jobs across verticals, whether sales, credit, risk, governance. It is. It remains a very normal hiring pattern, right? I'm not able to figure out your second question.
The second question is on the Wheels, sir. The end customer or the borrower, how has their income profile or cash flow been impacted because of the recent fuel price hike? Or has the tariff or, you know, revenues kept pace with that? Are the two costs reducing or is that not an impact?
Hi, Antariksha. Bhaskar here from Wheels. While the fuel price increase in the profile that we lend to, which is a very utilized single vehicle owner, you know, where the freight rate gets adjusted as a function of the fuel price as well. What the one that you are referring to is more impactful to the contractual fleet owners, the large fleet owners. For the utilized business like the ones that we do, which is more intra-city, it is more short distances. Here, the freight gets adjusted as a matter of time in the business line that we operate.
Sir, if it's possible, can you give us a rough breakup of what the ways the growth takes? I mean, you used to share it earlier, but as of today, what would the stock breakup be roughly across category?
I mean, we have a parcel segment of around 50%. We have commercial loading of about 22%. We have commercial passenger of about 18%. We have a tractor of about 8%. We have construction equipment of about 3%. That's how we thought it gets played out, and all of them are pretty much realized.
Okay, thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sonal Gandhi from Nirmal Bang Equities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Actually, a possibility, sir. I just have one question. Sir, looking at your loan losses for the last quarter, one thing I see that has been revised upwards to INR 206 crore, and similarly you have also increased your other income by INR 30 crore. That has been revised upwards. Can you please tell me what exactly has happened?
Sorry, can you please repeat the question? Volume was not clear.
Is it better now?
Yeah.
I was talking about loan losses. For the last quarter we have revised it upwards to INR 206 crores. Similarly, we have also increased our other income by INR 30 crores only. What exactly has happened over there?
Yeah. Sonal. There is a RBI guideline because of which there were some reclassification. If you refer to slide 17, there's a footnote that makes the reasoning clear. The NPA losses have gone into the other income, and that's the main adjustment.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Himanshu Taluja from Motilal Oswal. Please go ahead.
Thank you, sir. Just need one clarification if you can give on the moratorium pool. What's the total moratorium pool and also like between standard NPA or restructuring the SME overdue if you can then give that classification.
No, Himanshu, Vivek, we've been giving detail on 4 and 4-plus months moratorium book. In Q1 at the end of Q1 it was INR 4,900 crores. Now it has reduced to INR 4,500 crores as we speak. As I've given the colors on that, 43% is in current and another 27% in first and second bucket. As far as the contribution in the NPA and the, you know, restructuring group is concerned, almost INR 869 crores, which is roughly 36% of the NPA is from this book and almost 70% of the restructured book is from moratorium book.
Okay, sure, sir. Thank you.
Yes.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of R.S. Sanghai from VT Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Hope all well at your end and congrats for the quarter. I have two questions. My first question will be on the credit cost going ahead. You mentioned that you'll be looking to take some write-offs in the coming quarter. I think as a strategy you might also like to maintain some counter-cyclical provisions going ahead. What might be the credit cost one can expect from next quarter?
You know, to be very honest, we need to go with some more time because the whole recovery process and had just started last quarter only and we need to figure out the whole means available to us to recover our money. What I can only say is that we have around now 1,150 crores kind of NPA and we have a provision of around INR 560+ contingency of INR 300 crores. I genuinely feel that the credit cost will be under the provisions only, right? We don't have any extra P&L hit or you know. You need to give us some more time, maybe a quarter or next quarter to really figure out what is the stable credit cost in the P&L.
Fair enough, sir. My second question is on the OpEx front. I know you are investing a lot in tech and brand building and specifically employee addition. By when can we expect, you know, some normalized level of employee cost? Also the second part to this question is, when can we expect, sir, you know, more lateral hiring taking place? I know you have mentioned that we have added a lot of people from others like veteran bankers and all. When can we expect some more seasoned person in the top management as well going ahead?
No. 2 answers. First we have built our capacity, you know, from last 2, 3 quarters. Unfortunately quarter 1 was completely washed out. We hope that quarter 3 and quarter 4 will give us space to again use that capacity. As our hiring remains very normal and we are in line. In terms of key hirings we are doing, as and when is required.
We actually got head of video banking. We got a new digital officer, you know, so that is all been done. We remain confidential around it. You know, we haven't shown you data, but we are getting people from across the board, you know, whether large banks, small banks, fintech. There we remain very excited.
You know, we remain one of the most exciting companies for people to join us, right? That has also been seen, you know. Any other? OpEx side, I hear you. You rightly said that we are investing in our credit card business, QR codes. You know, we want to build a very new tech-led bank, so it requires a lot of investment in applications, infra, all those things.
We continue to do that. We will continue to do that because it's a future requirement, right? We have that added advantage. We have a high yield book and low-cost money. That is why we are able to even deliver kind of, you know, 1.8, 1.9 kind of ROA. That is quite enough for us, you know, to really make ourselves investable in this kind of properties and initiatives.
Just one clarification, sir. All this hiring that we are doing, all this lateral hiring, will it be more towards the Mumbai branch or is it a fair mix for both Jaipur and Mumbai, as in the hiring?
Across, you know. We are very sorted out ourselves there that the job which requires working at Bombay, people can join there. A job requires you to be at Jaipur, people need to be at Jaipur. We are not compromising our stand there and largely we are sorted out, so we are good to go there.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Niraj Desai from Anivith Portfolio Managers. Please go ahead.
Hi, Sanjay. Good morning. Congrats on a great quarter. You know, hopefully things will improve for us and, you know, you guys. My question was, you know, if I look at the disbursals in the quarter, you know, stronger for vehicles and, you know, slightly muted for MSME.
I'm sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Desai. Breaking a lot, sir. We cannot hear you properly.
Hello.
Mr. Desai, your voice is not audible. May we request you to please rejoin the queue, sir?
Sure. I'll do that.
Thank you. We'll move to the next question, which is from the line of Rakesh Shrestha from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Congrats on a great set of numbers. Sanjay, sir, first question is on our AU 0101 app. If you can share the unit economics and maybe the customer profile of this customer who are active on the AU 0101 app. You know, the broadly the question here, you know, is a sense that since most of your customer are captive customer and hence we would not be incurring any bank processing cost as such, you know. On a standalone basis, whether AU 0101 is at breakeven as of now, excluding the marketing expense?
I'll let Gaurav, you know, who takes care of our digital initiative, you know, so he will answer this question.
I'll give you sort of, you know, couple of points towards your question, right. The first one is if you look at the profile of customers that has been acquired. Satish has given out details on one of the slides. Broadly, you know, Rishi mentioned that, you know, we've acquired about sort of 28,000 liability customers, savings account, digital savings account customers through AU 0101. What we've seen is these are largely urban and salary customers. This is a slightly, you know, different profile from what sort of, you know, our overall stock of priority customers has, right?
Correct.
That's the first one towards the profile. Second term, point in terms of unit economics and breakeven, right? We are in the investment phase right now. There are two things we are doing. One is just building the product, right? You saw us launching zero one zero one, and we are continuing to add more products and more journeys on that.
We'll continue to invest on those. The second effort is towards digital adoption, right? There again, we've given out numbers which is across all metrics, sort of both registrations, monthly and daily active users. We see a very encouraging trend. We, you know, we have a dedicated team which are driving, you know, increased usage of digital channels for servicing, increased usage of digital channels for acquisition. You know, we'll continue to sort of scale our digital bank, but it's very early to talk about unit economics there.
Okay. Even on a standalone basis, I mean, let's say on a transaction basis, we would not be breakeven?
Again, you know, we don't sort of, you know. It's very difficult if you say, you know, can I break out the digital bank separately to rest of the bank, right? That's not possible to do, right? What maybe one thing that will help you is if you compare cost of acquisition of a liability customer through 0101, that's significantly lower than a cost of acquisition of a branch customer.
Yeah, actually, that is what. Let's say if we are acquiring customer through 101 app, you know-
101.
In what time, we'll be able to recover that cost? Any ballpark estimate there, or it's too early to comment?
You know, I mean, what I can share is, you know, our cost of acquisition of a digital savings account customer is sort of, you know, roughly, let's say, half of that of a branch customer.
Thank you, sir. Next question is to Bhaskar, sir, again, sort of a repeating one. Sir, you know what Antariksha was highlighting that at the ground level, what kind of feedback we are getting? You know, the fuel price is sort of increasing every day. And of course, you know, since we are in the segment wherein your tariff will get adjusted maybe immediately. But do you see any impact on the growth side, if not on the asset quality?
Ramesh, if you look at what we do, I mean, I will want to stay specific to what we do, and if you look at what we do on the commercial side, we are more a small commercial vehicle player, technically.
Right.
If you see courtesy e-commerce, courtesy the kind of demand that is coming up even for agri movement, for this small haul movement, there is a visible traction going on at this point in time in spite of the fuel price increase. While there is also in some places the fact that CNG option also does keep the market alive.
That's another part of the story. Even if you look at on the small commercial vehicle side, we continue to see the same kind of requirement going on because there is a pending demand of all the waves which are also pending. On the small commercial vehicle, there does not seem to be much of an issue at this point in time courtesy that adjustment and requirement.
Got it. Sir, just last question. Sorry, a follow-up on that. Might be a bit stupid as well. Do we have any data on, let's say, entire our vehicle book, how much of this would be running on the CNG directly linked to the fuel prices? How much would be running on the CNG and how much would be on the petrol diesel? At this point in time, broadly, it will be around 15%, 10%-15% is what I would think. Yeah, 10%-15% is what I would think.
Sorry, sir, I didn't get this number.
10%.
Sir Ramesh, we had given this in our annual report this time.
Okay.
Around 10% of our vehicles run on CNG right now.
Okay. Got it. Thank you very much, sir. This is very interesting.
Okay, thanks. Bye.
Thank you. A reminder to the participants to please limit their questions to two per participant. If you have a follow-up question, you may rejoin the queue. The next question is from the line of Amit Nanavati from Nomura. Please go ahead. Mr. Amit Nanavati, please go ahead with your question. The line is unmuted.
Yeah, hello. Am I audible?
Yes, you are.
Yeah. Hi. Just wanted to understand the nature of reversals here, right? You've had very strong reversals in NPA. What part of it, if you can give some color, would be, you know, wave one kind of impacted customers who moved into NPA early on? Or what part was more transient, which only moved into NPA last quarter and quickly will bounce back?
Yeah, Amit. Our Vikrant, you know, head of collection is there. He will reply on this.
Okay.
Just to give you some color on the total INR 555 crore of reversals which have happened in Q2. 20% has happened through security enforcement, 10% have happened through forfeitures completely moving out of the book, and 70% is through cash collection.
Yeah. I've got that number. Just want to understand those collections, those repayments which are coming, right? Were these like, the ones which slipped into 2Q or even the ones which slipped in the wave one or wave two versus wave one?
We haven't really looked at them. Amit, Vikrant here. We haven't looked at these numbers, you know, the way you wanted to know. At this moment, we don't have the data in front of us.
Yeah. Amit, you have to also understand that I think, the wave two didn't really see a lot of slippages, to the extent that we saw in wave one. Like for us, if you look at the gross NPA tagged as on March end was 4.3%, which was INR 1,503 crores. When you come down to 30th of June, when wave two impact might have come in, we still had INR 1,496 crores. For us-
Yes.
The impact was more upfront.
Understood. No, because wave one we saw a similar trend, right? What slipped in Q4 immediately bounced back in Q1. Just wanted to understand if, you know, whatever at a gross level slipped in Q1, it's bouncing back in Q2. Second question on the cost front, right? At one end you have heavy investments being made on the digital front.
At the other end, if I look at branches, right, versus say Q4 2020 or at a 2020 level, you're up by around 50 percentage points in terms of our branch count. and we'll also be having the elevated collection cost. Broadly, which part will normalize sooner, later? What contribution of those costs are broadly, if you can give some sense? Or what would move in the whole cost equation?
Amit, of course, there might be a smaller elevation around collection cost, but as you know, we are nearing to the pre-COVID level in terms of activities, in terms of collection efficiencies and all those stuff, and we are also growing, right? I think the most stabilizing item will be around the collection cost, you know, which should be stabilized by maybe next 2 quarters.
You know, but we will keep on investing in our branches because we are just around 800 touchpoints, and our digital outlook is not so big as of now, right? Both the properties, you know, whether it's a digital properties or whether it's our branch properties, we need to expand and we have that whole plan. That will remain elevated.
I think this quarter we had an exceptional quarter because of our mega campaign coming in, and we launched the credit card and we launched the QR codes and the digital properties. There is a certain amount of elevation there. I think those will also get subsidized in coming quarters. Our investment in all those properties will continue. Okay. If I may just add, Amit, we've also built excess capacity, you know, on the asset side. Because business disbursements are still picking up, as the disbursements pick up, that should give us some improvement in operating leverage as well.
Understood. Last thing, any growth aspirations this year that you'd want to kind of, point out?
Not as of now. You know, what last experience taught us that, you know, this is still an unpredictable environment. India looks good, but maybe not internationally. We just want to take every day as a new day and really want to come and execute our plans not thinking too much about future. Let this overcast goes away maybe next two maybe next one or two quarters, then we will say, you know, how we want to grow in coming years.
All right, sir. Thank you. That's it from me.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Viren Desai from Edelweiss. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, Sanjay. Am I audible now?
Yes. Yes. Yeah, hi.
Yeah. Congrats on the quarter and, you know, hopefully, us as well as, you know, India will sort of come out of this COVID related issue. The question I really had was on the disbursement side. If I look at the MSME disbursement, while, you know, that's a more broad-based indicator of the economy, the disbursements are slightly weaker as compared to Wheels, if I, you know, compare both the business lines. The MSME disbursement even in Q1 was relatively muted. Just wanted to get your thoughts on that.
You know, SBL, you know, we're a very small caterers service provider on the road. They were largely impacted, and we have also had done tightening our credit delivery process, right? You will appreciate that this quarter too has allowed us some kind of hope.
Right.
You guys are also settling down, our team is also settling down, and our focus was more on collections. But I think the coming quarter will be more festive, you know, and God forbid if COVID doesn't come, you know, lot of economic activity will help, you know, trickle down lot of benefit to those people. I think we will be able to come back to the similar levels of growth, you know.
But that book remains very exciting for us. And the way those customers reacted, you know, after the normalcy has come in, that has given us more support and confidence that we need to rebuild this book to the next level, you know. But I think we need to keep patience for some time, and then once everything settles down, you know, we'll press ahead.
Yeah. The other question was on the Wheels disbursement that we had of about INR 2,000 crore. What would be the proportion of used cars within that? If Bhaskar can generally talk about the used car market, you know, given that there is a supply issue at the OEM end because of the chip shortage and the supply chain issues. How is the used car market shaping up and the competitive intensity there?
On the new and used proportion, we continue to remain 50/50, Viren.
Yeah.
That's something which we have been doing for the last couple of quarters. If you see that there has been a conscious design about going on the used business. That continues in that same ratio. Your question on the used car business, yes, we are definitely seeing a demand because in the event of a new vehicle not being available and with used vehicle options actually getting better with every passing day. Because, you know, the kind of models which are coming, people are upgrading. If the earlier timeline was about five to six years, it is now coming down to about three and a half to four years. A, the availability of used cars is going up with every passing day.
In the interim, because of this short-term shortage of new, there has been a few lesser exchanges. Not to read much into it, but I would see this continuing and sustainable over a longer period of time. In terms of the competitive intensity, frankly, the same players are in the field. There are no new financiers who have come into the financing side of the used car business as we see in the current situation.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Bharat Shah from ASK Investment Managers. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Sanjay.
Yes.
It's been a remarkable kind of a period of departure from many troubles that are intervening between.
Yes.
I have one basic question, and I wanted your kind of incisive assessment. If you talk about a great bank, which is future ready and forward looking, I would say there are six different pillars. The liability management strength, business model and underwriting capability, a suite of products so that there is enough to offer, customer engagement and acquisition efforts, technology, people and talent pool, and geography and distribution. Leadership, of course, remains the most important, but on that, I don't need to ask because I already know. On these other aspects, what is your own assessment of where AU stands today?
Now that hopefully the shadow of pandemic is kind of being left behind, and it looks like the country is more ready to embrace opportunities rather than keep worrying about the pandemic. In terms of the liability management, underwriting, product suite, talent pool, customer acquisition, geography and distribution, and underwriting strength. On each of these, if you can and of course, technology, what is your own assessment as to where AU stands?
Yeah. Good morning, Barbhai. You have amazing questions. Because I commented in my opening remarks about the objective of a bank, honestly, is to have the customer in a center stage, right?
Yeah.
We need to, you know, offer.
I could join little late, so I missed your earlier comment coming.
Okay. It's fine, Barbhai. Perfectly fine. No, I just want to say that the objective of a bank is to, you know, keep customer in the center stage, you know. To begin a banking franchise, you need money, right? I strongly believe that the purpose of any banking franchise is to raise retail or stable money at a decent cost, you know. I won't say low cost or high cost, but at a cost which that franchise can manage, right? Honestly, last four and a half years now, I'm very happy the way we have built up. We have understood first about the importance of this and then have built up the entire ecosystem internally and externally, right?
We began with a high kind of rates, but as we are now moving forward, we have all these things in place, whether it's about people, product, processes, brand, trust, service attitude, you know. You would have seen that we have grown ourselves now from a zero level in April 2017, now at INR 40,000 crore at some around 6% rate, right?
Being an SFB, it was not easy journey, but just putting ourselves on every day, applying ourselves on every day, you know, and building that connect with customers, building that relationship and also building the digital options around it, right? Because we started with a tab banking, you know, which opened up around 80% of our saving account in 30 minutes, right? We have just launched our super app. We launched our credit cards, QR codes.
I think all these things have been done just to make customer very comfortable around franchise, you know. We have done lot in last four years because being an NBFC, we were just lending money, right? There was little bit, you know, challenge around our relationship management that time. We have understood the importance of relationship and offering the holistic outlook towards customer handling and building all those things required to catch his imagination, right? I'm sure our team will understand more and more as they get maturity. The focus is immense and we are able to take lot many learnings from the competition space.
We are just around, honestly, around 600 branches to have a real distribution for the branch banking, right? In that also 50% is in the core markets, right? You will be surprised to know, Barbhai, that in some of our core markets we are even bigger than the largest bank of this country, right? That is giving us lot of confidence and we are building lot of momentum there. I think this is, in my opinion, a 50 or 60% of the franchise, right, as a banking, you know. If we can sort out our liability franchise, customer relationship, customer engagement, customer trust, you know, we can actually lead this organization for forever type, you know. There we are not making any compromise, anything, you know.
We just want to focus on that one part, you know, more heavily, and doing everything. Honestly, I spend every day, you know, a couple of hours to really see how we are building our branch banking franchise, right? If you build a branch banking franchise and you build a liability franchise at a low cost, I think lending becomes easy.
You will appreciate that AU has built up their asset franchise from last two years, and there we have the ability to lend in the core markets, right? That is why AU always remains a profitable bank even in initial years because there we were able to charge a little bit higher rates than our urban market customers. There I found that AU remains one of, you know, we remain like a previous avatar NBFC.
We know how to lend, how to collect, you know, whom to lend. Our credit policies, our collection process, our collection strategies, our sourcing strategies remain absolutely same the way we have done in NBFC. Our vintage book profile which is green. As we are in our home loans is now 10 years old, right? The entire team is well fit. You know, you will appreciate that in spite of this whole pandemic for last 6 quarters, you know, it's such a long drive, but our NPS remained in a band range, you know. I'm very happy the way the customer also reacted towards it, you know. That has given us more confidence that we should go pan-India, right, in coming years, you know.
The idea remains that, you know, we borrow, we take money from urban markets and lend it to rural markets and we retain a priority sector book, have income generating assets. Our principal assets are very clearly laid down. You know, we are adding commercial banking because in urban markets or even in rural markets, certain kind of customers look for a bank CCs, bank overdraft, bank guarantees, trades, you know, international trades. That is icing on the cake for us. That team is also well settled for the last five years. You know, Vivek is on the call. He's Head of Commercial Banking.
I think India would be next five six years. I think that book has the ability to grow, right? I think there we have, in my opinion, liability and asset, we have largely sorted out. Of course, every day we have to execute based on the learnings and based on the opportunity we will get. In the last round, you know, it's around digital.
It's not an easy subject. For a bank, we are highly regulated and digital is very specialized skill. But I am very proud of the team, the way they have built on their own, on our limited limitation around our people and limitation around our role as a franchise. You know, we can't experiment everything.
The way we have built our super app, the way we are building our video banking, the way we have built our whole UPI system, you know, credit cards, QR codes, and we have very amazing leadership at every level. They're, they are very passionate to do this. I hope, you know, for me, a digital is more an enabler, right? And that we are doing it. Digital becoming a business for us, you know, may take some more time, but we are clearly focusing ourselves and that is why we are doing lot of investment there. I think that investment we are, we are keeping ourself for next five ,eight, 10 years type of horizon because it requires that kind of runway, right? That is there.
Otherwise, other than that, I would say whether it's people, which is so important for us, you know, our team remain intact. You know, last time we also spoke about the those challenges that we faced, but I think it was one of the events. Beyond a point you can't control people's choices and people desires. AU remain one of the most exciting companies for people to join and work. You know, we have our own culture, and we are proud of that because we have come to this level because of that culture and execution. We really want to be continuing on that path because banking is not a fragile business.
You know, we need to keep a lot many things in check and control and, because in the end, we are dealing with the public money. That is also being sorted out. As we move forward and based on our growth, the whole India is our opportunity, honestly. We are just in 15 states with less than 8, less than 600 towns, you know. We will go pan-India in times to come, but we are not in a hurry. You know, we will take every step based on some requirement, right? As hopefully you will see AU growing from here and becoming a pan-India bank, right, in coming times. I think this is there.
Other than that, you know, our compliance standards, our governance standards, our, you know, whatever way, the way we operate is not. We are doing as a bank. We are doing from last 25 years, and we got the support of every investors, big institutions, people like you know, who have supported us in our thick and thin times.
I believe that, you know, we will be continuing on that path. The team is entirely excited, very young team, 30-plus age kind of team, you know. I think just we need to have more patience around us and look for the opportunity when it comes and, you know, we will be good on that line. Thank you so much, Bharat Bhai . I hope I answered you.
Yeah, yeah. Sanjay, always very eloquent. Let me simplify what I was asking and maybe for some other day. For the moment, I got a lot of good answers on what I was raising. To summarize what I was trying to say was that I believe India is emerging into a very, very large opportunity itself. Good banks will have a huge amount of role to play. If AU is stating that future and to engage into that opportunity, then I think some of the most important key pillars need to be well founded. Apart from leadership, entrepreneurial capability, agility, I give AU 10 out of 10 because that is what my personal opinion and belief is.
For other areas, if whenever you think, kind of a introspective analysis is done on these in a subsequent call or any other call when you think, if we can kind of do a more detailed discussion on these, each of the key pillars, that would be great. It would be good to hear your own viewpoint of where these things.
Yes, yes, Durgai. We will take care of that. Thank you so much for your inputs.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Abhijeet Sakhare from Kotak Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, good morning. Congrats on the quarter.
Hi, good morning.
Sir, first one was that on asset quality, when we look at the first and the second quarter together, we have seen like INR 800 odd crores of recoveries and upgrades, but we still have something like INR 450 odd crores of fresh NPLs. Looks like the segments where inflow and outflow happening, it's the same one, right? Vehicles and SBL. Where is the disconnect here? As in which category or profile of customers are recovering so quickly and which are the ones which are still sort of slipping into NPL?
Abhijeet, you know, you have the question. Largely I would answer this that the people who are having a commercial passenger vehicles, right? You know, like school buses and you know, the normal buses, you know, they are not doing well. In a restructured asset they got the restructuring done through that. But once that get maturity, they are slipping in the NPAs because their business has not come back, right? Like, you know, for SBL, like the tent house, the schools, you know, some kind of marriage related event companies and all those things, we got restructured them in last year, but they haven't come back. There are certain kind of profiles which has not even started or still struggling, right?
Those businesses and those customers are not even able to pay and they are defaulting it, right? Otherwise, lot many businesses like taxis, even salons, the kirana stores and all those things which were getting some struggle early, but they have come back strongly because of this opening up, you know. That is the whole reason of some kind of slippages and more of a upgrades.
Got it. The second one was on you said that we've hired like 3,000 people during the quarter, but the employee base is still marginally lower. It gives an impression that the attrition levels are still fairly high. Is that a correct observation? If yes, like which portfolios or segments where we are still seeing very high levels of attrition?
Abhijeet, you know, this remains an issue for every organization, and we are not saying that we don't have that. It remains always on the front end, you know. You will appreciate that people in the poor markets, in villages join bank to do something, you know, and when they find that banks are very difficult things, you know, and then only the people leave, right? Most of the people who leave is on the front level people, right? Their attrition is close to around 40%, right? That will continue to be very honest, you know. But if you see the whole attrition at top 100 people of AU, it is very less, you know.
I would appreciate that many companies have published their internal transfers also, but that's our policy, right? Because I don't think that banking is rocket science, right? If you are a chartered accountant, you know, if you are a professional, you can be used for many functions internally, right? For me, if you are a head of risk or a head of accounts or a head of audit or a head of compliance, you know, it's hardly a difference in the whole job, right? And that's our policy. We are running this kind of whole practice from last 25 years, and we have reached to this level because of all those practices, you know. One-off events, you know, should not change our course, you know.
I strongly believe that we really take care of our people. In our AU, you know, 10% people have been jobs, right? There are people who are working from last 20 years. I think we will take corrective actions wherever required. There is an industry phenomenon around attrition, you know. We will appreciate that lots many banks are coming, lots many fintechs are coming, lots many NBFCs are coming. Everybody has ambition, you know. Once we became bank, we also hired from our competitive banks only. I think this is how the whole circle will happen. I think we need to be very aligned on our whole objective and keep working on those lines.
Got it, sir. Great. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Abhishek Murarka from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, Sanjay and team, and congratulations for the excellent quarter. So my question really is on credit cards. You know, the acquisition is happening nicely. You've issued about 30,000 cards this quarter. Any plans to tie up with any of the card issuance companies like slice or, you know, Uni Cards or something like that to accelerate acquisitions? And also can you share how many of your 21-odd lakh customers, how many of them are eligible to get a card? I heard that you said 3-4 existing card customers are ETB, but how many are really eligible? Have you done some analysis and if you can share that?
Yeah. The first one, you know, yes, of course, we have just launched our credit card and our Temenos product is just settling down, you know, just 2 quarters. The discussion is on and the team will take the call at a time of the requirement. I think that could be a partnership with some good brand or some kind of outsourcing partners or even doing the credit, you know, it's on the card. As and when it will come, we'll figure out. The second one, you know, to be very honest, you know, when we figured out that who is eligible, it depends on how and where we want to give the card, right? At what cost and all those things.
Rough back-of-the-envelope calculation is that our one-third customer is eligible for credit cards because they already have credit cards, right? That's one data which support us that, you know, one-third of our customers can get our own AU card. Then of course, another 17-18%, you know, we can actually lend them based on our relationship with them, you know, whether it's in branch banking relationship or a loan relationship. Overall, you know, 50% of our customer base in the next two three years, you know, should get a card from us.
Okay, excellent. The incremental issuance that is happening, I know the composition may change later on as well. Currently, what is it? Is it more salaried or more self-employed, or what kind of customer profile is really being given cards?
In credit cards?
Yes.
We have the data there. Interesting. I think broadly, if you see the issuances we have done. Basically out of 50,000, if you see 55% customers are broadly new to credit cards. They are not new to credit, but they are using the credit card for the first time.
Okay.
Within that, almost 80% is existing-to-bank clients, 20% are new-to-bank clients. About 40% would be salaried. Just about
Around 60% are salaried.
60% are salaried.
Around 40% are self-employed.
Okay. You said 80% are existing to bank, but I think earlier you said 3%-4% of the card customers are existing to bank. Did I get that wrong?
No, no. I don't think we mentioned that. Most of the customers in the initial phase are existing to bank because we are moving ahead with the pre-approved offers based on the analytics that we have done.
Okay. I guess I heard that wrong. Never mind. Thanks. Thanks so much for this, for this clarification.
Thank you. Nirina and Rajman, this was the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Aseem Pant for closing comments.
Thanks, Rukia. Thank you everyone for joining the call. On behalf of the entire AU team, we wish you good health and happy Diwali. Please reach out to us in case you have any further questions. Thank you.
Thank you. On behalf of AU Small Finance Bank, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.