Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to CSB Bank Q1 FY24 earnings conference call, hosted by Yes Securities. 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 this 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. Shivaji Thapliyal from Yes Securities. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Nirav. Good afternoon and a warm welcome to all those who have joined the call. The CSB Bank management is represented by Mr. Pralay Mondal, Managing Director and CEO, Mr. B.K. Divakara, Head of Strategy and Corporate Legal, and Mr. Satish Gundewar, Chief Financial Officer. We specifically thank the management of CSB Bank for giving Yes Securities the opportunity to host their result call. The management will first be making some opening remarks, after which we will throw the floor open for questions. I now invite the management to make their opening remarks. Pralay, over to you.
Thank you, Shivaji, for hosting the call. Thank you, everybody, for joining. Very good evening. We just announced our results for Q1 FY 2024. I'm sure you have seen the commentary, seen the results already. To begin with, I think the globally, I think the economy has started improving slightly, though at a very slow pace. The declining trend is projected in the global GDP growth even now, where 2024 might witness some gradual uptick as inflation moderates and real incomes strengthen. Headline inflation is projected to decline due to tighter monetary policy taking effect, lower energy and food prices, and reduced supply bottlenecks. Global growth has slowed sharply. The risk of financial stresses in emerging markets and developing economies is intensifying among the elevated interest rates.
Uncertainty over the evolution of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, which global impact remains a key concern. From the hawkish Fed announcements, market feels there could be another chance of 25 basis points hike in the next meeting, though certain headlines are changing because of, you know, the bond yields are going down. Even yesterday, I think, there have been certain inflation-related points, which is also into help Bank of England. I think certain green shoots are emerging where the interest rate may not be continuing to go up continuously, but at least another 25 basis points is expected. On the domestic side, India has been stable and resilient, as reflected in sustained growth in bank credit, low levels of non-performing assets, adequate capital and liquidity buffers.
The narrow current account deficit, I mean, is really pretty good and rising foreign exchange reserves. Ongoing fiscal consolidation and the robust financial system are setting the economy on a path of sustained growth. Headline inflation is gradually moderating due to the combined impact of monetary tightening, supply side measures, and easing of global supply bottlenecks. The slowdown in monetary tightening by central bank has resulted in bond yields declining. However, taking cues from the hawkish Fed announcements, 10-year benchmark is showing an increasing trend, but it's in a range between 7.07-7.13. System liquidity is hovering around INR 2 trillion surplus. As per RBI statistics, in the banking system, deposits grow by around 13%, little less than that, and advances grew by slightly above 16% on a YOY basis.
I think that's broadly where we are now. Now, coming to CSB specifics, the overall performance on both top line and bottom line was pretty good on a YOY basis, and highlights of performance are improved profitability, net profit INR 132 crores, up by 15% from same time last year. Operating profit witnessed a growth of 17% over same time last year. Provisioning buffer of around INR 170 crores over and above regulatory requirements, which includes a contingency provision. Could maintain a NIM above 5% for the quarter, around 5.4%. ROE improved YOY from 1.75% to 1.79% for Q1.
Liability is improving the funding base, deposit growth of 21% YOY, almost in line with what we did last quarter growth, as against industry growth of around 13%. CASA growth of around 6% YOY, CASA ratio could be maintained above 30%. In my last call also, I said we'll keep it between 30-32 on a sustainable basis till we continue to grow, then FY 2025 onwards, we will take it up much faster. On the asset side, on the CASA, one more point is, while it is a 6% YOY, average CASA growth is much faster than that for us, which means we are getting a sustainable CASA growth over a period of time. Asset growth front, net advances grew by 31% YOY.
Industry has grown by around 16%. Gold loan portfolio crossed its 10,000 mark and registered a growth of around 42% YOY. Yield on advances for Q1 FY 2024 is 11.18%, with an improvement of 55 basis points. Improved asset quality metrics is also there, fared well in all key parameters, GNPA 1.27%, NNPA 0.32%, PCR 93%, and if you take out the written off portfolio, then it is 72% around. Contingency provision account in books is higher than NNPA. Continuing with accelerated NPA provisioning higher than RBI requirements, which I just talked about before, we have fully provided the asset portfolio in line with RBI guidelines. On the capital side, of course, we retain a very high capital, we're still 26%.
A low proportion of risk-weighted assets compared to the industry, and that is also helping. Shareholder value creation front, book value per share has reached INR 184, pretty consistent growth. EPS for Q1 FY 2024 is INR 30.57, ROE is at 17.5%. Investments, we are making 100 branches during FY 2024, and 60% of those branches will be in north and west. We are working majorly on technology enhancements. I'm sure there'll be a lot of questions there, so I'll elaborate that point of time. Majorly on technology enhancements, including new core banking system. In conclusion, on a YOY basis, we have done well. We will do better through the year on all key parameters.
On a YTD basis, the quarter has somewhat softened, on the deposit front, as I mentioned in the previous call, the slightly high-cost short-term deposits that we had mobilized to fund the loan book in Q4 got matured, and rebuilding the book was done cautiously with due cost considerations. We had deliberately kept those deposits at a slightly shorter tenure, because we knew that interest cycle eventually will flatten out, and hence, we'll get the benefits of that, maybe after a quarter or two, as and when the interest rate cycle starts flattening or reducing. Few large value takeovers and prepayments affected our SMA and also books slightly. These are some of the older books, but still we have shown a growth.
Higher investments in people, technology, systems, et cetera, are required, and for the scale-up, which are impacting the cost side slightly. I have said before, cost is, can be seen as cost and investments. Investments on people, investments on infrastructure, distribution, technology, all those are going full blown, and hence, we remain in, we'll continue to invest into that because it has a payback period. Over a period of time, we'll see the cost to income starting to have a glide path towards our 45% kind of a guidance by FY 2030. Enhanced focus on income streams are helping us, like commission, trade, Forex, processing fee, liability fee income, the insurance fee income, all of that is looking good.
We'll continue to work towards the achievement of the milestones in the set under SBS vision for the year, and try to achieve the vision ahead of the target. The management team is pretty confident. I also want to add that we have almost now filled up 80% to 85% of our senior management positions now, across most businesses and verticals and functions, et cetera. We are all having the, you know, potential to build the bank of the future. From now onwards, we'll see by FY 2025, the build phase of the bank will be over, and then the scale phase will start from FY 2026 onwards, and FY 2027 to FY 2030 will be the absolute take-off stage.
With that, I conclude my opening remarks and hand over the conference back to for other 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 remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking your question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Participants, you may press star and one to ask the question. The first question is from the line of Suraj Das from B&K Securities. Please go ahead.
Hello, sir, thanks for the opportunity, and congratulations on a good set of numbers. I have a couple of questions. First question is on the growth trajectory and means outlook. If I see your growth this quarter, I mean, loan growth in absolute term is hardly INR 545 crore, while deposit and investment are broadly flat on a QOQ basis. In terms of growth, while the YOY growth % is great, on absolute basis, the incremental business appears to be slightly sluggish. My question is, I mean, what are your views, sir? How do you see it going ahead? That is question one.
Question two is, sir, if I see your LCR and CD ratio, so LCR has come down to 100%, and CD ratio is also, I mean, high at around 86%. It appears that there is hardly any excess liquidity left on the book. On this backdrop, how do you see your deposit growth and loan growth in coming quarters and as well as in FY 2024? Do you feel that you need to be more aggressive on the deposit front, and hence you need to increase the card rates on both SA and TD, or some, I mean, only SA or TD, I mean, what are your views there? Consequently, how do you see your earnings in coming quarters as well as for the full year 2024?
One last question on the data reading side.
on your slides, slide 9, according to me, in the Prudential provisioning policy slide, there the NPA provision that you mentioned, INR 66 crore, which is over and above your, you know, IRAC requirement. The question is this provision is already accounted in net NPA calculation? I mean, has this INR 66 crore been deducted from gross NPA to arrive your INR 68 crores net NPA figure? Yeah, that is all from my side. Thank you, sir.
Thanks. Thanks, Suraj, for your questions. I will answer the first two, and I will request either Satish or Mr. Divakar to respond to the third question. Yes, on the growth side, year-on-year growth is robust, and we have continued to grow, what, in actually faster than what we grew last quarter on a year-on-year basis. Generally, first quarter is soft for us in general, and then it starts picking up. That's how historically it has happened. Clearly, we are committed towards what I had said before, that we will grow faster than the system by 30%-50%. The team is confident to sort of come up and say that we'll grow faster than the system by 50%, not 30-50 anymore.
If that at all gives you a confidence that the team is quite clear that we have to grow faster than the system by 50%, at least. Which means that if the system grows by 13%-15%, we should be able to grow somewhere around 25%, and we are geared for that. Coming to the second question on CD ratio and LCR, yes, that has dropped a little bit for various technical reasons as well. CD ratio, of course, is a function of deposits, and I've already said before that we will remain in the range of 85%-90%.
Almost all the numbers, if you see, including CASA, including CD, including growth, and if you look at my commentary or transcript last time or last to last time, it has been pretty consistent, and the results are exactly in line with that. CD, we'll keep it between 85% to 90% because a bank which is growing by less than 10%, even, two years back or one and a half years back, is growing at 30%. When you grow at 30%, obviously, overnight, granular deposit mobilization, which will help everything including LCR, CD, cost of funds, everything is not easy. We have to sacrifice somewhere. I think, CD ratio between 85% to 90% is somewhere we will hold ourselves to.
On the LCR, this will fluctuate a little bit here and there, but we are well above the regulatory norm, and we are pretty confident that this will not going to be a challenge for us. If the question is funding for our asset growth, I don't think there is any problem at all for us in terms of funding for asset growth in the foreseeable future. The NIM of 5.4% and the cost of deposits, et cetera, as you see, we are holding to that. To that extent, I think we are having a stable growth trajectory. Coming, do we need higher interest rates for mobilizing deposits or CASA? Answer is no. I don't believe in buying deposits or buying CASA. We will sweat the system to ensure that we get the right businesses.
Having said that, we will focus on a lot more verticals. Those verticals includes a task, includes more focus on government. We will start implementing salary businesses, and we are launching that. We are segmenting our quality of products and going gradually higher. We are adding 60% more branches in north and west, where the liability franchise is predominant, and we are focusing on that. We have launched transaction banking. There are various initiatives which we are doing, which will help us in building the CASA as well as the deposit franchise, and just not one. Lastly, we are adding 800 to 1,000 more people on the front end to get on the sales side, to add more customers to the bank.
All of these will build a deposit which is sustainable and a compounding growth story, so we don't need rates to build the businesses. These are the first two answers to your first two questions. On the third question, Satish, you would like to add?
Your question was in terms of our provisioning policy, which is more aggressive than the RBI norms. The simple answer to that is that if the provision is made on an NPA account, then, of course, on the net NPA, when we calculate, it will be reduced from that. If it, the RBI norms, require us to provide, say, 25%, and I provide 50% on that, and if it's an NPA account, then, of course, that provision will be counted for calculating the net NPA. Over and above that also, we have spoken in our earlier calls also about the contingency provision. That contingency provision is held against some of the standard accounts.
That is over and above the NPA accounts provision, we also hold a provision, contingency provision, which are specific to some standard accounts. I think that should answer your question.
Yes, yes. Yes, sir, it does. Thank you so much for the elaborative answer, and all the best.
Thank you, Suraj.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Mona Khetan from Dolat Capital. Please go ahead. Mona Khetan, may I request you to unmute your line and go ahead with your question, please?
Yeah. Hi, sir, good evening.
Hi, Mona.
... My first question is on the cost of funds. Going forward, what sort of trajectory do you expect? We've seen another 15 basis points rise in cost of funds. Should could we sort of expect the same run rate on the rise in cost of funds, or how do you see it?
On cost of funds, I think, gradually you're seeing a flattening. I mean, it had increased the cost of deposits and cost of funds, but now it is starting to flatten. One more quarter to go, so by the end of this quarter, I think this is the last quarter where we'll see if at all anything on the cost of funds elevation. After that, it will start either flattening or tapering down. That is what our take when we do our analysis of our portfolio. And NIM will also follow that. We, from our NII perspective, maybe this quarter we'll continue to have a soft quarter. Third quarter onwards, I think NII means net interest income.
Eventually, I think 3rd quarter onwards, we should start picking that up as well.
Sure, got it. Secondly, on the fee lines, we've seen very strong growth on a year-on-year basis. Are there any one-offs out there or this kind of, you know, traction could continue?
We, our bank, cannot, is cannot do one-off. Secondly, I don't believe in one-off. Whatever you see will be sustainable franchise, long-term growth story. What you see this quarter, you will see better next quarter on fee income, and that, this have been promising from for the last one and a half years. I said that core fee income is my focus, and you are seeing now core fee income is becoming a sustainable story for the bank, and we will continue to grow this further, actually, okay. To that extent, you will see. Because we are launching a lot of other things on the fee side. From that perspective, you will see core fee income growth to sustain. This quarter, for example, we have not even cleared the PSLs income.
While we have bought some PSLC on the micro side, we have not sold anything, and we are sitting on reasonably large book. All of that will also add to this income, but I don't consider PSLC or traded as a core fee income. Core fee income will do even better than what you are seeing right now.
Got it. When it comes to the employee expenses, on a high base, we continue to see, you know, very strong growth. I understand you have, you know, large addition, of employee base, plans to add, you know, in a big way this fiscal as well. What sort of growth in employee expense could we envisage?
Let me clarify one thing, that this was a little bit of aberration. This one is a one-off, because first quarter employee expense, the way we have managed so far, rose up little bit, and then gradually it steppers down. To that extent, in number of employees, you will see continue to grow. If you look at it, Q4 to Q1, our number of employees have gone down actually instead of going up, but that will significantly go up in the next three quarters. Our employee cost has gone up primarily because the way the expense we expense out the bonus and other things. That's the reason it is showing up little bit. Also, we had some actuarial costs, et cetera, this quarter. If you nip that off, that one-off kind of a thing.
Hmm.
I think, employee cost will be in line with our growth in employee. Actually, it will be lesser than our growth in employee, because now we are expanding the base of the employees and rather than the top end of the employees, because that's 80%, 90% done. To that extent, I don't think this is a one-off, and, you will see employee expense going up, but not at the rate at which it will be, probably at the half the rate which you saw this quarter.
Sure, got it. I have 2 additional questions. Should I go ahead or should I come back in the queue?
I don't know. Up to you.
Uh, ma'am-
Carry on.
join the queue again.
Okay.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Shubhranshu Mishra from PhillipCapital. Please go ahead. Shubhranshu Mishra, may I request you to unmute your line? Due to no response, we move on to the next participant. Next question is on the line of Pallavi Deshpande from Samriddhi Capital. Please go ahead.
Pallavi on the actuarial expenses, how much would the accurate amount be for the actuarial cost and would this be for pension liability?
I don't think those things are in the public domain, but it's, A, one-off, and B, not really very large to be talking of. Because as I explained to Monax, I said that there has been some additional there as well, but it is really not a very large amount.
Right. Just really on the cost of funds, I think, would you have any details on the bulk, any bulk deposit fees? What would be the share of that in the total bulk?
We don't pay for bulk deposits. Pallavi, there's the echo, but let me try again. What I'm saying is that we don't pay high rates for bulk deposits, and hence we do it based on relationship basis. Do we have large deposits? Answer is yes, but they are mostly historic in nature. Incrementally, we are primarily focusing on sustainable long-term kind of deposits, and they can be slightly large, they can be granular. We are pretty confident of the kind of deposit franchise we are building, which is not price dependent, and hence it will be sustainable and long term. That's the way we are building it, and we are pretty confident of building up a good liability franchise.
Thank you so much.
Ma'am, sorry, we are not able to hear you.
Thank you very much.
I think she's done with her question.
Yes. The next question is from the line of Sumit Rathi from Centrum PMS. Please go ahead.
Thank you for giving me this opportunity, sir. My first question is, what is our strategy, for example, over the next 2 to 3 years on the percentage of, say, retail loan as a percentage of AUM and SME as a percentage of AUM, like over a period of 2, 3 years, sir?
Let me give a slightly longish answer to this. Our, what we have kind of, zeroed upon is by FY 2030, as a part of our sustain, build, and scale strategy 2030, we will have 20% gold, 30% retail, 20% SME, and 30% wholesale and other businesses, which includes securitization. That is our 2030. Where we are broken it up is now to FY 2025, one phase, FY 2025 to FY 2027, second phase, and FY 2027 to FY 2030, next phase. We have completely planned it out, how we'll do in which, in each block of this two, three years.
Right now in the build phase till FY 2025, we will continue to depend on building our revenue and for investments, the money which we need from the gold loan business, which we understand, we have sorted the system. We have those investments already built in. Gold loan is continuing to do well for us, and hence, and it is, risks are very low. The losses are very low. We understand this business. Yields are very good, which I have shared with you. From that perspective, we'll continue to do something which is doing well. Parallelly, we are building the entire retail assets and the SME franchise. You could see that for the first time in the last 12 months, retail franchise have started showing positive growth because of the older portfolio.
There's a run up there also, that's why it was showing negative before. Even SME was showing negative, now last two quarters, we are seeing a positive growth. These are green shoots, what we are doing. Given that, A, there is a, you know, there's a tremendous growth in retail in the ecosystem, I want to wait out little bit from a risk perspective and see, because when as a new entrant, you enter a system where it is a heated kind of a system, you don't want to catch the tail there. I want to wait it out for two years. More importantly, in these two years, we are building everything, including leadership, processes, internal customers, the sales channel, which will build a liability franchise and the liability customers.
I still believe that you don't go out and distribute retail loans based on a credit bureau score and things like that. You need to understand the income of the customer, his relationship or her relationship with the bank. We want to build a proper franchise. That will take us 2 years. Which are the products we are focusing on retail? While we have some business, I mean, forget the old portfolio, which is already there, the new portfolio, there's a small portfolio in 2-wheeler and personal loans. The real ones which we want to focus on in home loans, in-house home loans. We want to do retail LAP as well as SME LAP. We want to do commercial vehicles, we want to do commercial equipments, we want to do auto loans.
We are also looking at specific education loans targeted towards certain segments, which are, you know, where risks are lower. We are also looking at healthcare. All these businesses we have built, and we are building modules of LOS on these, and we are also parallelly implementing the LMS. We are also building up the leadership team for all these products. We have created business leadership team, the credit and the collections leadership team, and we are gradually starting to build the technology and the processes and distribution. The entire plumbing for the retail assets is now at play, and this will show up FY 2025 onwards. Till then, because the base is low, you're seeing a good growth on retail, but in absolute terms, it's not much.
It's just that it's green shoots. On the SME side, I think a lot of work has been done in the last one or two years, and that is starting to show up now, and you will continue to see the growth in SME now onwards, because now we are going to be seriously playing that game on the SME side. Wholesale, FY 2025 onwards, will take slightly larger strides there as well. Because of all this, 2025-2027, you will start seeing tapering down of gold loan as a mix, not as a growth, but as a mix. FY 2027-2030, you will see a significant growth on the retail and SME, and then wholesale will start picking up also from there, the way we are building the transaction banking also now.
Also, you need a large balance sheet to build a wholesale business in a more realistic way. That is exactly the plan. Along with this, if we do it right, the CASA franchise will automatically build, because based on all this, the CASA franchise will build, the fee franchise will get even better. You know, if you get the transaction banking, if you get the CMS, then automatically tasks starts doing better, the SME does better. All of these, the inter-ecosystem banking, as we call it, we are building. This is the way we are building FY 2025, FY 2027 and FY 2030.
Wonderful, sir. That was a great detailed answer. Thank you for that. In continuation to this, like for example, SME, we have seen, like from last 2 quarters, started giving those green shoots which we were looking for. I just wanted to understand what kind of underwriting practices related changes we have brought, because as I understand, gold loan underwriting and SME underwriting and other retail asset underwriting requires different kind of skill sets. What are we doing over there? Are we going to make underwriting centralized or decentralized, or what kind of people are we adding in our credit team? If you can give some color on that.
Sure. First of all, gold loan, there is very little credit in gold loan. It's a operations risk, not so much of a credit risk, because you have the metal with you. Only for higher ticket sizes, CIBIL score, et cetera, are required, but it's more operating this thing. Gold loan is not so much credit, it's more operation risk and execution risk. On the retail side, of course, you need very different kind of a credit underwriting, which is policy-based, process-based, technology-based, scorecard-based, and more than underwriting, constant monitoring of that portfolio and constant correcting of that portfolio is what is important. Coming to SME, I think. Let me just explain. It's a great question. Let me tell you.
How we are, there was a time in the bank, many years back, we used to do decentralized underwriting, many, many years back. We have moved away from that some time back, and now we are creating a very strong credit governance structure. Because all my life I have been more of a credit guy than a business guy, okay? During my HDFC Bank days, everywhere I have been more credit-focused. The way we are building is, under our CCO, we have created SME vertical separately, wholesale vertical, retail. Under retail, there are very various sub verticals, depending on which products. We have created under him, the inter-debt management structure.
Under debt management structure, we are creating retail separately, SME separately, and wholesale, and then recovery and some strategy function because collection has a detailed strategy requirement there, and MIS and other things, analytics. Analytics is also falling under the chief credit officer, who's looking after this. In short, on retail, obviously it will go on LOS and hence it will go mostly on the APS or LOS. On wholesale, obviously it is more relationship-based, and hence you have to get into the full depth of the relationship and understand what kind of business we are doing, why you are doing this, and we focus on certain segments, certain verticals, et cetera. But one thing is common, there is nothing decentralized.
The only thing decentralized is gold loan business, because that's operation risk. Everything is centralized based on policy, and I have worked in 3, 4 banks before this, but let me tell you, the amount of focus we have from board on credit committee and those kind of governance, it's really good credit, I think, which we are building up, both on wholesale and SME. To that extent, on credit, I am very, very confident we are building a very good governance and culture. It's just not processes. We are getting great people. We have got very good team under us right now. Credit is something which we are very, very focused on. Credit, debt management, collections, analytics, and we are building systems and data also. That's the way we are building credit.
Great. What kind of number of people, we have added so far in, say, credit team and our collection team, so far, whatever we have added?
I don't have exactly that number, we have built up a fairly large team. What we are doing is, unlike business, where you go bottom seven, top-down both, in credit, you need to go top-down first, which is creating the right kind of a management, right kind of governance and processes, because we don't want to unnecessarily build a large cost structure on the ground till the business starts coming in. The framework and the management and the ability and the this thing, that's what we are building right now. In terms of distribution, we are doing as and when the business ask for that, or we have those requirements.
On retail, it's not about just numbers, it's also about technology. We are investing significantly on the technology. We are building up in credit, the right kind of people, right kind of structure. I think the right answer to that is our structure is now in place. Now, on the ground, we'll build people based on the requirement of the business.
Thank you. Sumit, sorry to interrupt you. I will request you to join the queue again for a follow-up question. Next question is from the line of Deepak Poddar from Sapphire Capital. Please go ahead. Deepak Poddar, may I request you to unmute your line and go ahead with your question, please?
Hello.
Yes, go ahead.
Am I audible, sir?
Sir-
Yeah, yeah.
Please speak little louder.
Yeah. Hello. Yeah, thank you very much, sir, for the opportunity. Sir, I just wanted to understand, I think, in one of the remarks you mentioned that, till FY 25, the investment phase will continue, right, for the company?
Yeah, yeah. Our investment fee, you mean, fee income.
Phase, investment phase.
Investment phase. Yeah. Investment phase will continue. The major accelerator investment phase will continue till FY 2025 end. After that, we'll continue to invest into people, into technology, into geography, distribution, because I've said before, by FY 2030, we would like the branch distribution to go to 1,500 branches. Which means that it's not we are going to stop, but right now, where we are to where we'll be the big, you know, heavy lifting will be done by FY 2025.
I mean, on a steady state, what should be our aspirational ROA that we kind of would be looking at?
ROA, I have told before, again, I'm repeating, I am comfortable with ROA between 1.5%-1.8%, which is, even, large banks in the world space have done it. If we are lucky, few quarters we may get 2% also.
between 1.5% to 2% is the range that we
Yeah.
-we might be working with, right? On a-
Yeah, yeah. We will not go below 1.5, and it will be difficult to go up to. In that range, yes.
Understood. Yep, that's it from my side, sir. All the very best. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Neil Mehta from Investec Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. Most of my questions are answered. I just had one question, as a follow-up on the LCR bit. You mentioned that there was a small technicality on the basis of which, our LCR has come down lower this quarter, around 106%-107%. Would you be able to elaborate, please, on, what that technicality is?
Yeah.
Is there a different way into?
No, it's not very... Yeah, yeah, it's not very complex technology and technical thing. I'll tell you what. This is a tactical play which we I had decided that because I was seeing that interest rates eventually will taper down and then fall, and there is a huge rush after deposits in the fourth quarter and third quarter last year by everybody. We have taken a call saying that we will not lock in for a very long-term kind of a deposits, because then we have to pay a very high interest on that for a longer period when interest cycle will turn down. Based on that, some of the businesses deposits tactically, which we had picked up, was slightly shorter term.
Obviously, when in the last 30 days, LCR starts, you know, LCR is not very friendly on the numerator side. From, from that perspective, one is that. Secondly, obviously, if your current as a % is coming down a little bit, obviously, it will impact the LCR a little bit, and we will remain in the 30-32 range. That is something which you have to bear with. That's why I'm saying that even this quarter, some of the big tickets which we have taken, that is also running off. I am very happy about them running off because we are able to replace it with proper deposits now, longer term and better rates. But it will have some impact somewhere, and the impact is on LCR.
Q1 and to some extent Q2 will have this impact, but Q3 onwards, we'll be back where we were.
Got it, sir. Got it. That helps. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Sonal Menon from Prescient Capital . Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. This is Sonal Menon from Princeton Capital. I have three questions. First one is regarding the SME loan book. Just wanted to understand, I think it's been, like, few quarters now, we've seen the growth and the buildup, it's kind of muted. I wanted to understand the concentration of this book. This is largely Kerala, this is LKN. Also to understand the quality of the inbound proposals that you receive, is that something which is of concern? Just to get a sense of this business growth over time.
Okay. Thanks, Sonal, for your question. If you look at it, in fact, last call I also had told that the reason till Q3 we didn't pick up the SME business as much as we could have, is because I thought that the pricing of the risk in the market was not to our appetite. Q4 onwards, we saw that the pricing to the risk was becoming more rational, and that's the time when we started picking up the business, and this quarter also, we have picked up. If you stand alone, look Q4 and Q1, we have done reasonably well on SME, and that growth will only going to not only sustain, but going to go up.
Second question, in terms of concentration, if you divide the old book and new book separately, the new book is fully national across Northwest and South. There is no specific geographic concentration. In fact, we are expanding significantly in West and North as well on the SME side, and just not South. We are also leveraging the branch banking channel in a big way. We have picked up 20 specific branches where we are running a SME kind of a Mela between the SME and the branch banking, et cetera. We are also launching a new current account product variant, where the current account team and the SME team will work together. The transaction banking head reports to the SME head right now, who's also a very good guy.
They are building up solutions on FX and other businesses, CMS, et cetera, which will help us in building the SME business. From and we will leverage the branch banking channel. Also, the new acquisition channel, which we have created for liability acquisition, that would also have a current account team. They are also working with the SME from a lead distribution perspective. With all this, we are not interested in business where there is a walk-in of a customer. We don't encourage walk-ins, either in liability or in assets. We believe in going out and getting customers based on what we want and through referral businesses and things like that. That's the second thing on the geography. The third point is credit concentration, credit focus.
I have answered that before, that, we are very focused on credit, and we don't do bad credit. Because of that, we have to sacrifice business, we are. I was discussing the other day between my credit and SME head. We are letting go more cases than we are approving at this stage in SME, and our approval rate is well below 50% right now in SME. That's the kind of, credit reserve which I'm happy with.
Which is good to know, sir, because I think when we do talk to some of your peers in the same market, we hear not as tighter SME non-book growth. This is heartening to know. This is good, this is good. This answers my first question. I have a follow-on, which is on your Fintech partnership, your partnership with OneCard.
Yeah.
which maybe maps on to your retail loans in your book. What part of your retail loans is being sourced through these partners? What is the quality of that book, how are you managing that? Just trying to understand that.
We are currently incrementally sourcing almost nothing through the Fintech partners at this point of time.
Okay.
We are also waiting for full clarity, how the regulators are looking at it. Now, FLDG, of course, there is a better clarity on that. Also our API stack is just ready right now, we are not into the small ticket businesses and unsecured. We are not, I'm very clear that building of the retail business cannot be on base of unsecured businesses.
Okay.
If there are partnerships, but we have a good partnership on the card side, because we don't have investment planned in cards in the next few years.
Mm-hmm.
We are building the other tech stack. We can't build credit card stack right now. That business is doing well, that partnership is doing well, which is with OneCard. Otherwise, we are not doing any business at this point of time incrementally with any Fintech at this point. Are we getting to the state of readiness to do that? Answer is yes, from a technology perspective, because at some point of time, the clarity will be there and then we will join hands.
Sir, out of the INR 122 crore, of other income that we are generating, in a quarter, how much is that largely? I want to ask a question of how much, but is that largely being driven by OneCard? Like, because they are scaling quite fast, is what we hear in the market. Just trying to get a sense of.
No, no. No, no. Fee income. See, I have run a very large card business in HDFC Bank, so I understand where your point is, but our cards portfolio is very small, so we can't generate that kind of a fees. Our fees is primarily, I'll tell you, in terms of top to bottom, it will be insurance fee income, it will be liability fee income, it will be FX fee income, it will be processing based on various listing, LCBG and all of that stuff. It will be also ATM fees and some of the other card fees, which is debit card fees and all of that stuff. It's a combination of many things, it's just not one thing.
What we have done is, because we are adding a lot more customers to the bank now, our ability to generate a lot more fees, because this customer quality is much better than what we had before in the bank, that is helping us. That's why I'm confident that we'll be able to continue to grow this fee business on a sustainable basis, and we are investing after that. There are lot of good partnerships here, which we have got on the, on the insurance side, that is also helping. Overall, it's a very good place to be in on the fee business.
Understand that. That explains. Sir, this is the last question on CASA. Do we expect the CASA, because I think it's flattening or slightly in the negative territory. Just wanted to understand, do we expect the CASA to grow once your tech stack is up and running? Basically, is that the key trigger point, and we should wait for that?
Yeah.
Or-
Let me explain. I mean, you know this. How does CASA grow? CASA can only grow when he's able to utilize the money, right?
Mm-hmm.
based on usage, and that's how the float happens.
Mm.
Whether it is current account for the business people or it is for household, the SA.
Mm.
Only when you are able to cross-sell, we are able to create utilities around it, et cetera, then only we're able to get a reasonably ATS and reasonable value per account. Otherwise, it will not grow.
Mm.
That will be in that state of readiness FY 25 onwards. The granular real CASA will start happening FY 25 onwards. Right now, the CASA growth you will see is because of the new launches which are doing in products, whether it is current account or savings account, and huge acquisition we are getting to the into the bank, and we are improving the quality of acquisition. We have reduced our blue accounts, which are the lowest level accounts, and we are increasing our silver and gold, I mean, next level of accounts. We have added premium accounts, two more accounts there. So we are experimenting with all this. Once our core system is ready by FY 20, I mean, whatever time, 15 months from now, after that, lot of these things will get connected.
The right time for the granular CASA will be FY 25. Till then, we'll have to manage with a 30% to 35% in between, maybe 30% to 33% kind of a CASA ratio.
Understand that. We are reasonably sure of the triggers, basically, from 15 months from now. Basically, there are not too many moving parts from here in terms of execution.
FY 25, you tell me one thing which I have committed, we have not delivered in the last, 18 months. I'm pretty clear.
I've been tracking CSB for almost 10 years now, so from a private side to the public side, so I understand the business. I think this is something which I, for the longer term goal for me. That's why I want to understand.
FY 25 onwards, we'll be in the next phase. The build phase is over for us.
Sure, sir. Thanks a lot, sir. Look forward to being in touch. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line o Rakesh Kumar from BNK Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Just to address some clarity on this, notes of accounts number 10 with respect to labor codes. If you can help us understand what could be the likely impact, if any?
I didn't get your question. What is the question?
Yeah, that labor code, I mean, it's a standard note which comes, generally, if you see, in many of the banks also. Since it is not yet implemented, you know, it is very difficult because the final contours are not known, and we really don't know when it will become applicable. It is very difficult to comment on that. What is the point I can get it?
There is a normal process of like, you know, we have put that in the notes of accounts.
like, have you done any estimation on this? No, just because currently there is no clarity in terms of when it will become applicable. We haven't done any such work in terms of what will be impact of that, because still it is in the draft format and final contours are not known yet. Whenever the government will make it applicable, of course, there will be time for implementation. At that point in time, it will be clear at that point.
Got it. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
For a moment, I got the question wrong. I want to clarify, though, the question is not that. Let me tell you, in the last 18 months, we didn't have any strikes in the bank, okay? We didn't have any labor unrest. Our today, our productivity in terms of the way businesses are happening on a day-to-day basis, it's a very, very good, productive organization. We don't have any such issues, which, you know, we used to get a lot of questions on this before, but let me tell you, labor unions, this, that, et cetera. Everybody is working together in growing the bank today, and it's a very good environment to be in.
Got it.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Arvind Sethi from Sundaram Alternate Assets. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thank you for the opportunity.
Arvind, may I request you to speak louder, please?
Yeah. Can you hear now?
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah. Sir, thank you for the opportunity. I just wanted to understand, like, few things, like, in a very basic, understanding, like, SME loans, like, are they predominantly LAP, are they predominantly secured? That is one thing I wanted to understand. What kind of LTVs or yields, like, you know, in the SME loans interest, and, what kind of ticket phases, it ranges. Similarly...
Yeah.
-like in retail loans, I can see, like, 32%, maybe 16% MFI. I was trying to understand, like, are Agri loans, also like, again, secured loans? I was trying, that's what I was trying to understand.
Okay, sure. First question first, which is SME LAP secured, unsecured. We don't do anything unsecured in SME, okay? LAP is a separate business. We don't mix the LAP business with SME. LAP, we report separately. On LTV on LAP, I think it is 60%. SME, there is no question of LTV because mostly it is cash flow-based lending and detailed credit related. It is not to do with LTV. Ticket size, the way we divide is two parts. One is, the INR 0-10 crore turnover is done by the branch. Leads are given by branch through our separate team under retail. Branch doesn't do it. There is a separate team vertical which works with branch and does it.
This is a pretty much standard structure, which is there in all the banks. INR 10 crores to INR 250 crores turnover is looked after by the SME team, and hence, whatever that ticket size means. Anything between INR 2 crores to INR 25 crores is something which SME team mostly looks at, and average ticket size will be around INR 7-8 crores. Coming to Agri MFI, yes, that's a part of the retail business. It's doing well. MFI, we don't do directly, we do it through BC partners at this point of time. Agri, mostly it is KCC and MSME kind of businesses in the on the ground, because we don't have our SME team going there, so they handle both the businesses on the ground.
We have, we are planning to launch, in a way, technically, we have launched, probably this, tractors and all that, but we don't want to take it off at this point of time. Agri and MFI is doing pretty well for us. Because we are distributed almost, 58% of our branches are in semi-urban and rural, so we are also leveraging that. We don't leverage that for microfinance business because those are BC-oriented, but we leverage them for our Agri businesses as well. Agri business mostly is secured, and MFI, of course, BC business, all are unsecured. These are typically JLG kind of loans. That's broadly what I thought, you know, hopefully this is what answers your questions.
Just one more thing, like, you did mention about, retail loans and SME loans, you know, like, as a proportion of the total loans to be at a certain range by every 30. Can you just repeat that?
It's very easy to remember. That's why I've done it like that. 20/30 is 20% gold, 30% retail, 20% SME, 30% wholesale, securitization, and all other businesses together. 20, 30 is 20, 30, 20, 30. 20 gold, 30 retail, 20 SME, 20 wholesale and others.
Thank you, sir. Thank you so much.
Thank you. The next question is from line of Asha Raman from Spark Capital. Please go ahead.
Hello?
Hi, Asha. I can hear you.
Yeah.
All right.
My question is pertains to the things like you had mentioned. In next quarter also, we can see some deterioration in the CASA in terms of the short-term maturity. What would be the LCR? I mean, how you see LCR ratio then? That is 107-
I can do.
Hello?
I can do a crystal ball glazing, but what I can tell you is that CASA ratio will be between 20, 30% to 32%. 30% to 33%, actually. That is the range I'm planning, and will be better than this year, this quarter. LCR also, hopefully, will be better than this quarter. Where it will be, we don't know, okay? I would like to keep my hard rate at 110%, so this is 3% below hard rate. I would like to but that is the last quarter. If I Q3 onwards, I've done my calculation. Q3 onwards, our CASA will remain in this 30% to 33%, but LCR will start improving because of the explanation I gave before.
Okay. What is the target for the credit cost has gone up for the quarter?
This is the problem. When you have a negative credit cost, as soon as you touch zero...
Yeah.
or basis points, we say it is gone up. I had told this in my previous calls, that our long-term thinking is our GNPA will be below 2%, NNPA will be below 1%, and credit cost will be contained within 50 basis points, 40-50 basis points. This is what I've told before. We are well within that range. GNPA has reduced significantly compared to same time last year. NNPA, 32 basis points. Slippages are well under control, and credit cost has marginally gone up. Credit cost has one component, which is upgrades and recovery. This quarter, upgrades and recovery was slower than what we did in fourth quarter, and hopefully, we'll be able to pick it up next quarter.
But it's in, it's really very small numbers to talk about at this point of time. I had already told that we can never remain in negative credit cost zone forever, so sometime we have to cross that, so we crossed that this time. We'll see how it goes next quarter.
Okay. Okay. Thank you so much, sir. Thank you.
Thank you, Asha.
Thank you. Next follow-up question is from the line of Sumit Rathi from Centrum PMS. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my question back. Most of the questions are answered. Just wanted to check, like you have planned out till FY 2030, in a very crisp and clear manner. What would be the impact on our credit cost? Like, how would it move? If you can give some clarity on that, like till FY 2025 and then beyond that, because our asset mix will change. Our credit cost accordingly, our NWA would go up. How do you see credit cost panning out over this, in these three stages?
No, very good question. The answer will be very long, but I'll try to keep it short, okay?
Yeah.
Typically, what is happening right now is, gold loan, if it is somewhere between 45%-50% of the portfolio, the credit cost is almost negligible. Okay. We have credit costs coming from our older portfolio, which slips, okay? Which is also reducing balance. Okay. I mean, I'm giving you how counter, you know, how each are going to counter each other. One is positive, one is negative. Third is we will launch new businesses on the retail side, and obviously, nobody can do retail business at 0 credit cost. Okay. Credit cost will start going up.
Having said that, at least for the next 5 years, once that, this starts picking up from FY 25 onwards, the way it will play out is, typically it doesn't show up in the first 2 years because the nature of the business on the retail side. It starts showing up, but because we'll continue to grow the retail very well for the next few years, we have to look both lagged credit cost as well as coincidental credit cost. Both we have to monitor separately, but what you see is basically coincidental credit cost. Coincidental credit cost is going to continue to be slightly at a lower base, lower pace, because the portfolio will continue to grow on the retail side.
Going from where today to 30% on our balance sheet, which is going at 30%, will be significant. To that extent, at least internally, I have to look at both lagged delinquency as well as coincidental delinquency. The next part is SME. SME will, you know, have its cycles. However good we do, if somebody can tell me the GDP will continue to grow at 6.5, 7.5, and will actually become a 7 trillion economy by 2030, then I can assure you that our SME credit cost will be very low. If there is a cycle in between, we cannot escape that cycle also. That's how, that's again, the nature of the SME business.
On the wholesale side, I think, we will contain the credit cost reasonably well. We don't see, again, there could be a bulky thing that it can be one account here, one account there, that can come in. Overall, that's why we have calculated all of that. That's why I'm telling you confidently that this year we will be still in lower, single digit, probably, on the credit cost. Gradually, we'll move towards the 40 basis points credit cost by FY30, which is very good. The best banks are in that range. This will have this kind of a trajectory that will move on from FY25 to FY30. I hope I could answer you, otherwise, this needs a longer conversation.
No, that was very good, sir. Thank you. Thanks for patiently answering all the questions. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Narendran from RoboCapital. Please go ahead.
Hello.
Hi, Narendran.
Hello. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Most of my questions have been answered. I just wanted some clarity over your OpEx costs. I mean, you said that it will be around 45% by 2030. What could be the trajectory? I mean, at what point of time will we see a decline, you know, in the OpEx costs?
No, I have done this calculation, let me tell you. Again, it's a slightly longest conversation. The way the OpEx works is that there are 4, 5 elements in OpEx, okay? One is the technology, which is the largest for us. Second is distribution. Third is manpower, which is linked to distribution, but it is not necessarily linked to distribution when you launch so many products and functions and verticals and geography, et cetera. Non-distribution and manpower cost will also be there. These are the three main heads on the OpEx side: technology, distribution, and manpower, okay? Salary cost. When you look at the break even of each of these, manpower costs breaks even, typically in 6 months' time, okay?
The branch or distribution breaks even, for us, it was break even faster before because we are doing small branches with only gold loans, et cetera. Once we do proper branches in larger markets, et cetera, they break even between two-two point five years. Then the technology break even between CapEx and OpEx, it may take three years or so on a rolling basis. When you do all this calculation and put it in Excel and do a rollout plan, because we will continue to grow the manpower by, let's say, anything between 30%-40%, at least for the next two -three years, and then probably by around 25%-30% or maybe more beyond that. We have to bake that in.
I've done this, waterfall, we see that we have already told in my last call how much, what kind of investments we are making in technology. You break it into CapEx and OpEx, and typically, the CapEx will be for us around 35% and now on our PNL, 65% will be OpEx on the PNL. On the investment side, CapEx will be almost 70%-80%, and OpEx will be 20%-25%, probably 20%-25%. When you bake all this in, these all this baked in brings us to around 43%-45% by FY30 in terms of cost to income. Obviously, cost to income is a ratio, so you have to have a lot of income assumptions out there.
Because you asked the question on cost, I have divided cost into 2 parts: cost and investment. Investments are these 2: distribution, which is operating leverage on the branches, people, operating leverage on the people, which takes 2 to 6 months, and technology, which gives you that kind of a break even. With all that calculation, we have a phase-wise year-on-year CTI, which will take us to around 45% by FY 2030.
Yes. Thank you very much for answering that very patiently. Just a second question.
Narendran, you're not sounding very clear.
Yeah. Is it clear now?
Yes.
Yes, I was saying thanks for the patient answer. Just one more thing. Given all your assumptions, is it safe to assume that our NII will increase by about 20%-22% in FY 2024 over the last year?
Our NII increase was around 17% this quarter, okay? net interest income, right? That's what you're saying.
Yeah.
NII increase was 17%, if I remember it correctly. next quarter will not be better than this, but Q3 onwards, we'll start doing better. Exit 2024, obviously, I can't crystalize and give that kind of a number, but we'll be probably better than where we are by the end of the year. Q2, we may have a softer quarter on NII. We'll make it up with fee income.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Our ROE will remain, will sustain basically.
Thank you so much. All the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Shirish Vaze, from Moneylife Advisory. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Thank you for the opportunity. Most of my questions have been answered. My question pertains largely around something that was mentioned in the Fairfax annual letter. They had mentioned that the bank owns 38 residential and commercial properties, including land banks, which we had acquired several years ago, and some also from invocation of security. Just wanted to understand the geographical distribution of this and the market value, and what are our plans to monetize these properties? Thank you.
Okay, now I'll answer that. The way it works is, these are typically the BNA assets, which, by regulation, you can hold, seven + five, right? seven years + five years maximum, and within that, you have to monetize within of a choice. Because most of these, a lot of these are basically... See, we are a 100-year-old bank, so you must understand that a lot of these are probably recovered, because somebody didn't pay money or, you know, somebody didn't pay their loans back, et cetera. A lot of these BNA assets are, non-banking assets, as they call it, NB assets, is it called? NB assets.
Non-banking assets.
Non-banking assets. These are recovered from that.... We have, we are following RBI guideline, and some certain times this goes into litigation and all that, so it is almost like recovery procedure, but we have taken position of all this. We are not acquiring anything anymore. This is history, and this is legacy for us. We are following RBI guidelines, seven + five, and within five, 12 years, we have to get rid of them, and we are on our way. On geographic concentration, while I don't know, but I'm just assuming both of us are on the same page, I mean, in the same situation here. I'm assuming because the bank was South-focused, probably the larger VN assets, non-NVA assets will be in the Southern regions.
I know for sure that last week, our head of premises who had gone to Amritsar also to look at some premises and get rid of that. We would have some distributed here and there, but I would assume that there will be some larger concentration will be on the south. That's only an assumption, I don't know the data.
Oh, got it, sir. I'm assuming that we don't expect a very large sort of income accretion from the monetization of this assets over the years.
I've not even considered it. I have not even considered it. I've not even looked at it from a PNL perspective. What I am telling you, if this is on top of that. Not really, you know, not really material. Mr. Divakara, you want to comment on this? You'd know better than me on this.
No, we don't have any real estate assets as such for sale, so hardly non-banking assets are there, amount-wise it is actually negligible. We don't have any plans to sell any of our real estates.
Okay. Got it, sir. Got it, sir. Thank you. That was all from my side.
Thank you. Next question is from Nalin Shah from NVS Brokerage. Please, go ahead.
Yes, sir. Most of our questions have been answered. Just two quick questions. Sir, this, promoter shareholding, I believe from some RBI guideline, it has to come down. If you could just tell us by what % and by which year? The second question is that with such excellent performance and profitable numbers, when can we expect Bank to be on the dividend list?
The first question first, on the Fairfax holding. Technical answer is that if you go by regulation, within 15 years, 26% is something which everybody knows, right? They came in 2019, somewhere around 2034, probably, it'll have to be brought down to 26%. Between that, how it will be brought down and what is the trajectory is a conversation between Fairfax and RBI. We are not a decision maker on that. Of course, RBI may come back to us once Fairfax and some conversation goes in, and they will keep us informed. On that, at this point of time, we can't comment on this point, but we know that 26%.
Fairfax mindset is that's what I hear, and I've heard it from very senior people in Fairfax, that they would like to hold it as long as they can. On their own, they would not dilute anything unless they are told to dilute. On your second question on dividend, I mean, as an equity investor, would you like dividends? I don't know. Okay, but, you know what?...
Yeah.
especially when our ROE is so good and things like that, and we are planning to grow the bank so well. Having said that, the reason we are not giving dividends is because we never, we were live today. I mean, we had accumulated losses. For the first time, we can look at it because our accumulated losses has been wiped off. Rest is a question of what board guides and that we have to look at it. Dividend is not always the best way to kind of forget return on a high growing and a high aspirational bank.
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks a lot, sir. Yeah.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Vaibhav from Honesty and Integrity Investment. Please, go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for providing the opportunity. I hope I'm audible?
Yeah, you're audible.
Yeah. Thanks. Thanks a lot. I have a couple of data points. If you can help for gold loan business, if you can help me, if you can give me average gold loan ticket size and average gold loan per branch, and OpEx to average asset for the gold loan part of the business, not the total part of the business.
This data is not in public domain, so I would not be able to share most of this data. Typically, what I can tell you is that the gold loan ticket size for us will be between INR 1 lakh-INR 3 lakhs in that on an average. Rest of the numbers are not in public domain, so it will be difficult to share.
Would it be correct to say that the gold loan, because gold loan will have higher OPEX than the other part of the operation, generally, given our ticket size, would it be the correct?
That's correct. That's the correct interpretation, but with a asterisk, that where we are doing gold loan business, A, most of those branches have already broken even. B is, you know, we had invested into those already. When you are invested on that, we are getting from a marginal cost perspective and marginal benefit and marginal return perspective, it's very, very good for us. From that perspective, if you have to sit today and take a strategy call, theoretically, we can say that gold loan, this is the OpEx, and this is IRR. IRR is, somebody asked that question, I think I forgot to answer. It is somewhere between 11%-12%, somewhere around that, IRR, which is very good, and I think we have given that data also somewhere.
Anyway. Coming back to this, with that, with zero loss, I mean, with very minimal loss and with very little risk spreads, and already, we are working on a marginal cost, which is only the people there. It is a very, very good business to do. Going ahead, if it was so good, then it would have only become a gold loan bank, no?
Mm.
The reason that we are expanding in north and west and building all those businesses, because the gold loan customer, the beyond gold loan, you can't do much with him, because the liability business doesn't grow. Fee business, I mean, gold loan fee comes, but other fee businesses, wealth businesses cannot happen. From that perspective, we have to diversify and we have to build those businesses. This is a very niche business, has to be seen it that way. Because we are invested into it, we are sorting the system. That is exactly what it means in terms of marginal cost efficiency.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Got it. In terms of like scalability of this business, maybe because we might already be targeting areas, geographical areas, where we can really scale up a gold loan on a per branch basis really fast and to a reasonable amount. Maybe as of now, it's profitable to the extent it is. If you go deep and kind of target lower yielding areas, would the profitability will get affected for the gold loan?
That is why. See, the places where it is lower yielding, that is where your cost of premises also are higher, cost of manpower is also higher.
Mm.
In those areas, you should not be doing gold loan business, we'll not be doing gold loan business in those areas. In a prime area in Delhi and Bombay are, this thing, why should we do gold loan business? For that, we need the right products and segments. That's where we have to create that segmentation of the pyramid, which we are creating, and we are starting to build some of those branches now. We may have gold loan as another product, but the main focus of those branches will not be gold loans.
Mm-hmm. Got it. That's it from my side, sir. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you very much. I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Thank you very much. Thanks everybody for asking very interesting questions. I hope I could answer them. Again, we'll come back after a quarter to meet all of you. Thank you very much for participating. Have a good evening. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. On behalf of Yes Securities, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.