HDFC Bank Limited (NSE:HDFCBANK)
India flag India · Delayed Price · Currency is INR
740.50
+9.50 (1.30%)
Sep 21, 2026, 3:15 PM IST
← View all transcripts

Q1 21/22

Jul 17, 2021

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, good evening and welcome to HDFC Bank Limited Q1 FY 2022 earnings conference call on the financial results presented by the management of HDFC Bank. 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 brief comments by the management. To be in assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star and zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Srinivasan Vaidyanathan, Chief Financial Officer, HDFC Bank. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Okay. Thank you, Aman. Although we see some queue building up, but we'll get started so we can move on. Good evening and welcome to all. Appreciate the participants calling in today and waiting with us. Firstly, we'll go through some background, environmental updates, and then we'll get into the business highlights, and then we'll go to the results. Let's start by placing on record our appreciation and thanks to all staff and associates for steadfast and tireless focus on meeting customer needs in the midst of this pandemic. Particularly in this quarter, which was for most part impacted by COVID's second wave. There were several thousands of staff who were diagnosed with COVID. More than 10%, 12% of the staff, and all the staff and their families need special admiration and thank you. We had less than 1,000 staff vaccinated at the beginning of quarter.

Since then, we have done over 370 camps. We have also tied up with multiple hospitals to allow vaccination. We now estimate that more than 80,000 staff have had at least one dose of vaccination. During the quarter, activity indicators released for the month of April and May were downbeat. The economic activity released were downbeat, reflecting the impact of the rising COVID cases and lockdowns. High-frequency indicators such as power demand, auto sales, PMIs slowed sequentially in April and May. Rural demand, as gauged by two-wheeler sales, tractor sales, rural unemployment rate also took a hit. This time around, compared to the first wave, the rural was also in the thick of this COVID. In June, the economic activity improved, in line with easing COVID-related restrictions, lifting of lockdowns in various states.

This provides the backdrop of the activity in the quarter, which was mixed for most of the quarter, where almost, call it, 2/3 or 35, 40 days of effective work that could happen. Otherwise, the business was muted for rest of the time period. While the GDP numbers for Q1 might look upbeat due to low base, the sequential growth is likely to contract. FY 2022, our in-house view is that it would be 9.1%, brought down from little more than 10% that we talked about three months ago. CPI headline inflation steady at 6.3% and our house view is that it'll hover about 6% for next two, three months, needs to be seen, but we do expect RBI to continue towards supporting growth and keeping monetary stance accommodative.

During the quarter, our equity capital markets saw muted trends compared to the previous quarter, as private issuers through a mix of IPOs, rights, QIPs, and block deals raised little more than INR 24,000 crore versus equity raise of INR 70,000+ crore in Q4 2021. Retail participation in IPOs has been strong during this quarter. The equity fundraising pipeline both in public and private markets continued to be robust. During the quarter, we were mandated for five IPOs, including 1 IPO where we were appointed as lead merchant banker. Fundraising through the Indian bond market was approximately INR 1.25 lakh crore in the quarter, which was 49% or so lower year-on-year. Our bank is ranked number two for Q1. Now getting to some business highlights. Our association with the CSCs is helping us offer cost-effective services in semi-urban and rural.

The hub-and-spoke model, where every CSC is mapped to a branch to do service. As of June quarter-end, we have signed up approximately 1.71 lakh Village Level Entrepreneurs, of which 1.12 lakh are onboarded as business facilitators. In the month of June, we launched a new straight-through process journey for consumer durable product at the VLE centers. It empowers VLEs to issue sanction letters based on customers' eligibility. This removes the bank's intervention and enables the VLE to do end-to-end processing of the loan. We have launched our chatbot, EVA, for the VLE-specific queries. Through EVA chatbot, VLEs will learn about the products and services offered by HDFC Bank, which in turn will improve services offered to the last-mile customer. Healthcare initiatives that we talked about in the past is building.

Bank is building fully in line with the RBI announcement of extending loans for medical equipment purchases, stockists and so on. Hospitals are being funded for their investments in vaccination efforts. We have successfully activated the patient EMI, and CC and DC credit card, debit card programs at more than 200 hospitals. On the retail branch banking front, we focused on launching a unique initiative that take need-based selling to the next level. Immediate next best action is an artificial intelligence tool that studies the customer transaction patterns and digital behavior and is able to correctly pinpoint the financial need of the customer in the contextual relevance to suggest product and timing. It provides real-time triggers to the RMs on customer transaction patterns and digital behavior.

The initial trends are very encouraging, with a 6x higher probability of the customer to take the product based on analytics than the traditional process. One of the significant digital enhancements that helps in greater customer service is the walkout working journey. This is a revolution in servicing the needs of the customer. It aims to make servicing of the customer instructions paperless through the use of Bitly link and two-factor security authentication, even if the customer is not active on the net banking. Paperless journey was recently launched for a few of the services, and in due course time, it will cover many more customer instructions. On the digital front, I want to give an update on the digital front.

UPI transactions by count, both P2P and P2M in aggregate have sequentially grown 5% to INR 65.7 crore transactions, and over the prior year, it has gone up by 2.4x . On a similar basis, UPI transactions by value, both P2P and P2M, have sequentially grown by 11% to INR 1,065,000 crore, and over the prior year, it has gone up again 2.4x . For the quarter, in terms of the value, our P2P market share is about 10%, and P2M market share is about 14%, is on the UPI. Mobile banking and net banking users have grown year-on-year by 31% and 21% respectively. Transactions count has seen a growth of 103% year-on-year on mobile banking and 39% for net banking. We continue our focus on tele-channels for service, sales, and relationship. During the quarter, the telesales channel grew 400% in business over Q1.

Understandably, with a lot of lockdowns and this channel is the only active channel that on a remote basis could be relatively easily operated. On the payment business, the bank has got 14.9 million cards in force at the end of June, with market share for cards in force at about 23.8% May 2021 number. Slightly dated, May 2021 number. Bank's share in receivables stands at about 56%. The market share in issuing card spend stands at 28.5% as of May 2021. Within issuing spends, the bank analyzes retail spends separately, which caters to a large customer base which the bank has managed to build over the years, and the bank continues to focus on deepening the relationship. The data coming from the network franchisees spends per active card for the bank is 1.4x higher than the industry.

Average ticket size of the transaction is 1.2x higher than the industry, which reflects the strength of the franchise and the depth of our customer relationship. In retail spend, we've grown 53% year-on-year. Lower numbers of credit card customers are now revolving. The revolving balances are down because understandably, Jimmy will probably talk about our credit actions, and understandably, in the market, there is shyness as you see that card spending is down overall, right? Given the prevalent rate scenario, the bank is cautious in extending the credit. Another important information, while we look at retail spend as opposed to a total spend, which is the retail spend plus the business cards plus the commercial cards, that's what many people in the market see based on published data. We analyze retail spend separately. There is a reason why retail spend is more important.

About three-fourths of the bank's credit card customers hold a deposit with us, with aggregate balances amounting to 5x the card outstanding. That's the 5x the card outstanding is the deposits that are made available to us by the card customers so that it's very important to analyze the retail spend and the retail card relationship as opposed to a generalized total card spend and the total card relationship. Merchant acquiring. The bank has 2.3 million acceptance points as of June with a year-on-year growth of 24%. Acquiring business volumes including credit, debit, UPI, direct pay for the bank grew by 75% year-on-year for the quarter ended June. In this time of social distancing, the bank has continued its focus on digital payment solutions of various order, various payment factors.

As per RBI data, previously I was quoting certain things on retail spend through the franchisee data. Through the RBI data now on acquiring, the bank's acquiring market share for April stands at 50.5% versus 44% in April last year. On the retail assets, our book grew by 9.3%. Arvind Kapil will talk a little more in terms of where we have gone through in the quarter and how we are picking up momentum on that as we are coming out of the wave two, and how we are strengthening the digital solutions for customers on that. On the wholesale segment, paydowns have increased during the quarter as corporates deleverage. The bank continues its progress in gaining market share due to diligent adherence to sales process.

Wholesale credit growth largely from PSUs, and we continue to provide liquidity to quality and relationship-based NBFCs for on-lending as well as for PSL. Jimmy will allude to a few things as we go. Commercial and Rural Banking business largely impacted in April and May due to localized lockdowns but picked up in June. We will have Rahul Shukla talk a little about how that's coming along now. Collections, as I mentioned, were mostly stalled with the advent of wave two COVID, stalled this momentum as it was picking up in March, but from April and May, it stalled that momentum of pickup that we were seeing. This is reflected in the bank's portfolio as we face severely curtailed collection workflows during the quarter due to restrictions of personnel on the field and both health and safety concerns of our staff, as well as the customers.

I do want to cover a few sentences on the society and community. As its key ESG commitment, the bank pledged during the quarter, as you'd have read and seen, to become carbon neutral by financial year 2031-2032. The bank has a three-pronged strategy to achieve its objective to become carbon neutral, reduce consumption, transition to renewable energy, and offset carbon footprint. The bank has set clear targets on its environmental and social responsibilities, which include improving the gender diversity ratio, developing a green bond framework, and emission reduction targets. On the community front, the bank has set goals that are aligned to the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations and will track progress on this front.

In response to the challenges brought forth by the second wave of the pandemic, the bank has stepped up its work on upgrading health infrastructure facilities, setting up ICU facilities, oxygen plants, and distribution of nutrition and hygiene kits under COVID relief. An amount of INR 100 crore has been committed towards this. Some kind of a balance sheet strength at a high level before we go into the micro details. COVID, as I mentioned to you, significantly impacted the franchise, still about 1.64 million new liability relationships were opened in the quarter and an increase of 40% over the same period in the previous year. Deposit growth, 13.2%, strong contribution from retail, which grew by 16.5%. Advances growth increased by 14.4%, with a strong momentum and build coming from Commercial and Rural Banking, which grew by 25.1%. Liquidity is consistently strong at about 126%.

Capital adequacy, 19.1%, and CET1, 17.2%. We did build some contingent provisions during the quarter. The floating and contingent provisions totaling INR 8,000 crore helps in derisking the balance sheet. We continue to originate loans in conformity to our proven credit models. We'll cover credit as we go. I want to provide once more context. Some people joined late. I'm going to give a context again, then get into micro details. We'll get into details. As I mentioned in the beginning, COVID wave two had significant impact with people health concerns. Various bank activities were curtailed for almost 2/3 of the quarter. About 35 days- 40 days, we could count where there could be certain things that could be done, otherwise, significant curtailment. Lower product sales, including retail asset bookings, reduced card spends and revolvers, reduced collection activities.

In summary, impacting interest income, slippages leading to interest reversals and provisions, et cetera. COVID wave two is behind us for most part and subject to the hopeful of a benign COVID wave three, we see these are most part timing or temporary. We see buoyancy. As we go on this call, we'll have our frontline businesses describe their current experiences in the market. Let's start with revenues. Revenues grew 18%. Net revenues grew 18% to INR 23,297 crore, driven by advances growth of 14.4% and deposit growth of 13.2%. Net interest income for the quarter was at INR 17,009 crore, which is 73% of net revenues. It is up 8.6% over previous year and a tad lower than 1% over the previous quarter. Of course, net interest margin at 4.1%, prior year was 4.3%, prior quarter was 4.2%.

Net interest income sequential growth rate is impacted by approximately three percentage points due to lower yielding asset mix, including lower card revolver balances, higher interest reversals due to delinquencies, and a higher mandatory Cash Reserve Ratio, which got implemented late March, the higher CRR. Net interest income year-on-year growth rate is impacted approximately by 6 percentage points due to lower yielding asset mix, including lower card yield and revolver balances, higher interest reversal due to delinquencies, and a higher mandatory Cash Reserve Ratio. Moving on to other income. Total other income at INR 6,289 crore was up 54% versus the prior year and lower 17% versus the prior quarter. The impact of COVID on a sequential basis.

Fees and commission income constituting 62% of other income was at INR 3,885 crore and grew by 74% compared to the prior year and is lower by 22% compared to the prior quarter across various retail product lines, impacted due to the activities of sales in retail. Retail constitutes approximately 91% of this, impacted due to the activities. Effects and derivatives income at INR 1,199 crore was higher than the prior year and prior quarter, reflecting pickup in activities and spread, both sequentially and year-on-year. Trading income was at INR 601 crore for the quarter, prior year was at INR 1,087 crore, and prior quarter was at INR 655 crore.

Some of the gains from investments were monetized in line with our ALCO strategy. Miscellaneous income of INR 603 crore includes recovery from written-off accounts and dividends from subsidiary. I'll cover some of these more on recoveries a little later. Expenses. OpEx for the quarter were INR 8,160 crore, an increase of 18% over previous year. Year-over-year, we added 327 branches, bringing the total branches to 5,653 as of June end. We opened 45 branches during the quarter. On an average, one branch every alternate day.

Many days were impacted, still on an average, one branch every alternate day we managed to open. Branch opening has been impacted. We have approximately 150 branches in various stages of readiness to be opened soon as things improve. Since last year, we added 1,295 ATMs, cash deposit, and withdrawal machines, and 204 during the quarter. As of June end, we have 16,291 ATMs and/or cash deposit and withdrawal machines. We have 15,687 business correspondents managed by common service centers, including 131 opened during the quarter. The staff count increased by 7,651 during the last 12 months and is at 123,473.

During the quarter, we added 3,380 staff. We brought them on board. Cost-to-income ratio for the quarter was at 35%, which is similar to prior year level. We anticipate the spend levels to increase driven by incremental volumes, sales and promotional and discretionary spends on investments as the activity, particularly on the retail assets, ramp up. As we said in the past, the cost-to-income ratio will be reverting to 38%-39% in the short run once we are behind this COVID and the activities in the retail assets pick up, while our goal remains to bring this down again in the medium to long term. Moving on to PPOP. The Pre-provision Operating Profit at INR 15,137 crore grew by 18% over the prior year. Coming to some colors on asset quality.

The GNPA ratio was at 1.47% of the gross advances as compared to 1.32% in prior quarter and 1.36% in prior year. GNPA ratio, excluding NPAs in agricultural segment, was at 1.3%, prior quarter and prior year were at 1.2%. Net NPA ratio was at 0.48% of net advances. Preceding quarter was at 0.4% and prior year was at 0.33%. Again, net NPA ratio excluding NPAs in agricultural segment, was at 0.42%. Prior quarter was at 0.39% and prior year was at 0.29%. The core annual slippage ratio for the current quarter is at 2.54%, as against 1.66% in prior quarter and 1.2% in prior year. Excluding slippages in the agricultural segment, because we did have significant slippage even in agricultural segment in this quarter. Excluding slippages in agricultural segment, the slippage in the current quarter was at 2.2% against 1.61% in prior quarter and 1.17% in prior year.

As you know, 2/3 of our current quarter was impacted. That's part of what you're seeing here. We believe it will take next few months to get the missed collections to a regular schedule. Sale of NPA, INR 1,800 odd crore in the quarter. At the end of March, we had restructuring under the RBI resolution framework for COVID at about 60 basis points. At the end of June, restructuring one and two together is at about 80 basis points.

On the provisions, the core specific loan loss provision for the quarter were at INR 4,220 crore as against INR 3,153 crore during the prior quarter and INR 2,740 crore for the prior year. Total provisions reported were INR 4,831 crore as against INR 4,694 crore during the prior quarter and INR 3,892 crore for the prior year. Total provisions in the current quarter included additional contingent provision of approximately INR 600 crore.

The reported specific provision coverage ratio at 68%, as against 70% in the prior quarter and 76% in the prior year. There are no technical write-offs. The head office branch books are fully integrated. At the end of current quarter, contingent provision towards loans were approximately INR 6,600 crore. The bank's floating provisions remained at INR 1,450 as of June 30, and general provisions were at INR 5,300 crore. As on June quarter end, total provisions comprising specific floating contingent and general provisions were 146% of gross non-performing loans. This is in addition to the security held as collateral in several of the cases. Looking at it through another lens, floating and contingent and general provisions were 1.15% of the gross advances as of June end versus 1.10% in March 2021 and 0.99% in June 2020. Coming to credit cost ratios.

The core credit cost ratio or the specific loan loss ratio is at 1.46% for the quarter against 1.10% for the prior quarter and 1.08% for the prior year. Recoveries, which I said I'll mention it now. Recoveries which are recorded as miscellaneous income amount to 14 basis points of gross advances for the quarter, against 26 basis points for prior quarter and 9 basis points for prior year. Recoveries were also significantly impacted for most of the quarter. Again, the COVID impact.

It will take few months to get to a normal schedule to get the recoveries back onto track there. The total credit cost for the quarter annualized, including the contingent provisions created, was at 1.67% as against 1.54% in the prior year and 1.64% in the prior quarter. PAT at INR 10,306 crore grew by 15.3%, and net profit at INR 7,730 crore grew by about 16% versus prior year.

Some balance sheet items. Total deposits amounted to INR 13,45,829 crore, an increase of 13.2% over prior year and up 0.8% over prior quarter, which is an addition of approximately INR 1,56,000 crore since prior year and INR 11,000 crore in the quarter. Retail constituted about 82% of total deposits and incrementally contributed little more than INR 37,000 crore during the quarter, a growth of 3.5% sequentially and almost the entire deposit growth since last year, 16.5% growth year-on-year. With our persistent focus on granular deposits, CASA deposits registered a phenomenal growth of 28% year-on-year, ending the quarter at INR 6,11,801 crore with the savings account deposits at INR 4,26,000 crore and current account deposits at INR 1,85,000 crore. Current account increased by 24% year-on-year. It declined by about INR 26,000 crore during the quarter, primarily because of wholesale.

Savings account grew 30% year-on-year or little more than INR 98,000 crore and sequentially grew by 5.6% or little more than INR 22,000 crore. Retail constituted about 88% of CASA deposits. Time deposits at INR 7,34,000 crore grew by 3.1% over previous year and 2% over prior quarter. Time deposits in the retail segments grew by 6.6% year-on-year and 3.7% sequentially. Time deposits in wholesale segment decreased by 7% year-on-year and decreased 3% sequentially. CASA deposits comprised 45.5% of total deposits as of June 30. Credit deposit ratio was at 85% for the quarter, which is same as what it was in prior quarter. Prior year it was at 84%. Now getting to advances. Total advances were INR 11,47,652 crore, an increase of 14.4% over prior year and a sequential growth of 1.3%.

This is an addition of approximately INR 1,44,000 crore since prior year and INR 15,000 crore during the quarter. As per internal business classification, retail loans grew by 9.3% over prior year and de-grew by 0.7% compared to prior quarter. Commercial and rural banking loans grew 25% over prior year and grew by 3.9% over prior quarter. Other wholesale loans grew by 10% over prior year and grew by 1.5% over prior quarter. Maybe Jimmy Tata can give some color about the growth in the loans and the situation on the credit front.

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

Sure. Thanks, Srini. Hi everyone. Thanks for coming this evening. I'll first just go through a little bit on the retail side, discuss the credit philosophy, strategy and the portfolio management. I'll come back a little later for the SME and the Commercial and Rural Banking on the corporate side of it. I think Srini's alluded it to it already, so I'm not going to talk too much. Just this has been a quarter where things were not the most orderly because of the second wave that hit us. If you recall, just to recap for a minute, the previous discussions over a couple of quarters, we were talking about how the moratorium exits and the recovery of most portfolios up by December and perhaps the last of them by March, and we were pretty much back to the pre-COVID levels.

That was all very encouraging till the second wave hit sometime in April. The effective impact of this was of course on business, which I think Arvind and Rahul will have a little to say in a minute, but I'll just get on to how it impacted the portfolio. We found ourselves and our staff getting infected quite rapidly. We took a decision to put safety first and we stopped going out on recovery calls, et cetera. Most of the work that was done during those two months was actually on the phone, work from home and all that. I'll come to the impact in just a few seconds, but it's only been in the month of June that we really have had the ability to start going out. This is all despite the lockdown, so where there are restrictions, we still cannot do it.

I'm only talking about the self-imposed restrictions over and above the other restrictions during the first two months. That said, I must say that two, three differences between the second and the first wave. The second wave financially has been less severe. Health-wise, of course, has been much more severe. If you look at policy, not national policy, as compared to the first wave, again, there was more of a prioritization on the health and safety initially, and I think that it has been more selective in terms of not having nationwide lockdowns, et cetera, in the second wave. All this resulted in the financial impact not being as severe. The peak bounce rates, for example, have been lower than the first wave, et cetera. That's the kind of backdrop in which we worked around.

To just give two or three macro indicators on how things have dipped and then come up again, because you'll see this moving as a kind of common theme through everything that I go in. If you look at the Google Mobility Index, it tanked very badly as one would expect in April and May. A very good recovery in June, and by the time we sit now almost on a daily basis in July, it's virtually recovered to back to where it was before. That means something like a March, April level. You look at the e-way bill trends. Now, these start sending slightly mixed signals. The 3rd one will send an even more mixed signal to you. The e-way bills have been on the increase again.

You look at June over May, again, much higher, but still you are below the March levels over there, that's not as good a story. If you look at the Purchasing Managers' Index, which is a good indicator of actual activity as it's happening, that has lagged expectations month-on-month, hasn't really panned out. As I said, the macro signals also a bit of a mixed bag out to you. Let me get now straight to where we stand. The bounce rate essentially has held up in the portfolio. If you look at the zero DPD bounce rate, which essentially means people who are not in default on the date of the presentation, it has actually reverted back to the pre-COVID levels despite the hits that may have happened in April and May.

If you look at the overall bounce rate, it hasn't gone back to pre-COVID levels, but there has been a pretty good recovery in the month of June. If we go a little further into the month of July as well, there is a further recovery. I think the trends on reversal and the speed of exit out from this are relatively encouraging for us. I'll add that this is across products, and I'm putting this bounce rate out because it essentially signals that the inherent quality of the portfolio has not changed, and it is the safety-oriented decisions that would have had whatever impact that has happened over the first two months, and the reversal trends seem to be quite strong. I must also put this bounce in context with the rest of the industry.

If you look at the NACH data that gets published, you will notice that HDFC Bank has consistently had a 50% better bounce ratio. This is quite consistent. It was there even before COVID. It remains there after COVID. The space in terms of the bounce data remains intact, which once again reinforces to us at least that the inherent portfolio quality has not been very badly affected. Now let me move into the demand resolution. Here what we are talking about as we define this as presentation of a particular month collected and recovered during that particular month. This, of course, through May and April, as you will understand, sit quite badly because we refuse to go out.

Although demand resolution is, of course, an early bucket, I think that you do have a lot of augmentative collection that takes place, and you do need people to go out to hit those last two or three percentage points. It did suffer in the month of April and May. There has been a bright, if I can use the word, recovery in the month of June, and I think the early periods of July continue to bring that particular point out. Here we are not really back to pre-COVID levels, but we are well on the way back to at least a March kind of level, and March had almost caught up with the pre-COVID level. May have just been a percentage shy or so. In that sense, it's the best way I can indicate to you.

The team does believe that over this quarter they will have cleared the rest of the distance and managed the main reversal that's required. Since there were high levels of infection emerging in the team around April, and we obviously stopped it from May, and that's why it stopped. We got a lot of people vaccinated, it's not that we have compromised on the safety standards at all before moving out again. There has been a high level of vaccination. We got people actually back into the offices, even for the calling, et cetera, and had people with the ability to go out. I think that this is relatively temporary and will reverse. While I'm saying that, I think there is one product line where I should point out a non-COVID impact item, because we keep talking about how COVID has impacted things.

The commercial transportation has been hit by the diesel price hikes. Our previous experience also tells us that it usually takes a couple of quarters for people to manage to pass on these price hikes and cost hikes onto their customers. We expect in the current quarter, meaning the June-September quarter. July-September, sorry, that a fair amount of that would get passed on, and in the quarter after that, particularly with the help of the festive season, I think people would manage to bring things back on an even keel by passing on these increased costs. This is an aspect where we will need to look at the developments in that particular product. I think Srini touched a little bit on the restructuring in terms of where the levels have moved.

I'd like to say a little bit on the restructuring in terms of how we have gone about it and how we are continuing to go about it, because there is still some window left, and I would expect a large part of the restructuring to take place before September. We rolled out across various platforms to make it as convenient as possible for people to apply. There has been a minimal benefit of this in Q1, and we would expect to see some more of this in Q2 because we again had barely one month or so after the rollout to actually try and facilitate this. How we are going about this essentially is, and because these questions do arise in people's mind and we do get asked as well, so might as well say it before it's asked. We do not restructure if viability is in doubt.

We will take the pain and we will decide to move on with that. If people have lost jobs, we do take a slightly comforting view on this because most people who did lose their jobs would manage to regain employment as soon as there is some sort of revival and there are signs now that things are reviving. Once again, one would tend to restructure that kind of a loan. We noticed that there are a lot of people who are, while delinquent, staying in the same bucket. What this essentially means is they are managing to pay their monthly installments but are not being able to reverse the trend and catch up by making multiple installment payments. Restructuring here again seems to be relatively safe because the ongoing cash flow seems to be in order.

These are some of the, just to give a little bit of an indication because we do get asked as you know what we do and what we don't do. I think that's perhaps the best way I can do it. It's much more complicated than this and it's much more case specific than this, so please don't take this as some very simplistic or product program driven method. It's rather detailed. Just to give everyone a flavor of what we do and what we don't do. I think, and of course going behind our mind is the fact, two things which I'll come to a little later. I think one I just did touch upon myself, the bounce rates holding up and therefore the inherent quality of the portfolio remaining good.

We do feel encouraged to be, and we should in this environment, be more compassionate and empathetic towards these kind of things. We do feel encouraged to do this on a commercial level as well because of that. I think the second part to it is we, and I will come to this a little later, the new portfolio is definitely holding up and therefore better quality than the historic portfolio. That said, it is not such a new portfolio anymore. I have been talking of the new portfolio itself now for three, four quarters, so it is reasonably seasoned by now. Moving into the actual portfolio quality in terms of the collection resolutions now. I spoke of the bounce, the demand, and now we move into the collection resolution.

Here again, it's pretty much the same story and a little more exaggerated because those particular buckets depend much more on physical movement, which as we said was hampered. As soon as we got back into the physical game, the recoveries have been quite sharp. If you look not just at June, but if you look at early July and we compare the early days with the early dates of several preceding months, it's once again even more encouraging for us. The health first decision that we took is likely to get reversed by the end of the current present quarter in which we are in. I think this goes across products and across buckets, so there's nothing on the downside to put out over here.

I must point out what I spoke to you about July might be a little too early because there are very few dates, but the overall trend does remain in that particular direction. Recoveries, again, the same story, June better than May and April and in pretty good measure if I read some of the product level data over here, which we don't really put out in public, but significant improvements June over May and April over there. Compared to the two previous months, July once again looking more and more encouraging. I think that kind of covers one part of the portfolio management angle, and you'll have seen a kind of theme over here that April and May were problematic because of the decisions that we took.

Good recoveries across the board in all these things over the month of June, looking even brighter for the part of July we have covered up till now. I think the decision that we took therefore does seem to be vindicated. The portfolio does remain inherently correct and strong. I think the decision that the bank took was very timely. I think it prevented a lot of lasting damage in various respects, and has not really created a problem that cannot be reversed, which will happen. Again, Srini referred to the sale of assets, and I'll just add again a little more on the operational side of that. Yes, as you mentioned, around INR 1,800 crore this quarter. If you recall, it was a risk of short of INR 1,000 last quarter.

My reason for putting this out just now is that this is going to be a consistent activity of the bank, and I don't think it is also going to be a very standard value every quarter, because the way it is computed is not to make it a regular feature. We evaluate the portfolio during each quarter, and we take a decision as to whether we believe we can have a more efficient collection through our own efforts over time, or whether we should take the money available instantly and close the particular account. Each quarter, the amount that we sell depends on what we feel is emerging in those. These are rather detailed exercises that take place virtually at a case-specific level, even for smaller, granular retail assets.

I think I just should put this out over there that this will continue quarter and quarter, and the amounts need not necessarily be very consistent and regular. They will depend on what our view and commercial decision is with regard to collection at that time. That kind of puts scope to the portfolio management. I'll just take a few minutes in terms of the policy and what's coming through the door right now, but I'll hand over to Arvind to really complete that piece. If we look at bureau inquiries, you'll have noticed that across the industry that bureau inquiries are going up over the last few months. Pleased to report to you that it's going up at a faster pace for us. That, however, is quantity, so let's get onto quality.

Within what's going up in terms of inquiries, the share of HDFC Bank in these inquiries for the better-rated bureau scores, if you take a 750, 760 kind of level, which everyone considers to be a good level. If you look at what's arriving in for HDFC Bank versus the rest of the industry on inquiries, in every single product, you will see that there is a higher level of interest in HDFC Bank amongst the better credit-rated retail borrowers, typically around 50% better, but there is a large standard deviation across products for this, so I don't want you to think it's 50% across every single product. This, once again, is encouraging from the point of view of the quality of these inquiries coming in. The proof of the pudding is obviously in the disbursement. Inquiries are inquiries.

Happy to report it's the same story over there. Compared to the pre-COVID times, I think in every single product we've got, we don't put all this data out in public, but significant, meaning 33%, 40%, 50% better penetration into the higher scores across these. While I'm saying all this, I do want to emphasize that the reason I'm comparing to bureau is only because it's the only way we can make a comparison. We do much more than the bureau. For the bureau itself, we use multi-bureau analytics. We have our own algorithms. We do a lot beyond. We have trade-level diagnostics that we put into. There's a lot more that goes into it. My speaking about the bureau comparative is only for that purpose, to give you a comparative. It's not really reflective of all the work that goes into our portfolio.

I think I mentioned this before. Every single band of bureau score, we would have a better than average portfolio performance in that sense. Do I have anything more to tell you? I think the other piece is the industry comparative on delinquency. Nothing very different to report from before. Across products, there is a significant differential between our delinquency and that of the market. The fundamental story of industry-leading delinquency numbers remains over there. I think that's all I wanted to state to you, except that, yes, I alluded to it a little earlier. The new book is holding up well, and that obviously encourages us to move into a growth phase as the economy hopefully now turns and we don't have too much of a third wave coming on or anything like that. We're well prepared for these sort of things, but.

I think that's all I want to put out right now. Arvind, over to you.

Arvind Kapil
Group Head of Retail Assets, HDFC Bank

Yeah. Thanks, Jimmy. A very good evening to all of you. On retail assets, let me start by giving you guys a quick sense from the last quarter. I think despite the seven to eight weeks of mobility restrictions across various states, I can fairly say that our teams have probably addressed customer needs through our contactless and digital lending solutions, which we beefed up after the last lockdown. The results, of course, the retail assets portfolio growth is showing around an 8% approximate over the June last year. If I had to give a sense, during the same quarter last year, when there was a kind of a severe lockdown, our retail assets portfolio actually de-grew by 3%-4%.

Owing to the kind of agility and investments in contactless digital dispense across retail asset products and the capabilities that we've incorporated, the portfolio has kind of held on, but also been able to sequentially grow the portfolio very marginally over the March 31st, 2021. At this junction, let me take a minute pause and acclimatize you exactly with what's happening in the month of June, give you a quick sense on whatever data there is at an industry level. If I were to look at the bureau data at an industry level and look at the demand for retail loans in the month of June 2021, it's almost restored presently to 80% of the January to March quarter four of the last year, which I think I would rate it as an encouraging sign.

At the bank, we've witnessed a very sharp bounce back in the demand for most of our key products, whether it's auto loans, unsecured loans against property, and home loans. If I look at the industry data also on the vehicle side to give a quick sense because that's more precise as a reflection of the economy. If you look at the CIBIL data, auto loans from quarter four of last financial year, which is January to March, and if you look at the last quarter, it's a decline at an industry level of 31%, and two-wheelers down to a 41%. I think on both the businesses, I have reason to believe we've gained substantial market share. With our portfolio mix, I do believe we probably have a fantastic opportunity from here on to scale up both on top line as well as yields.

In the unsecured loans, which is personal loan and business loans, we do believe we have a leadership position and we intend to capitalize this low delinquency portfolio with the increased sourcing contribution from higher income customers. That's already substantially showing an improvement in our mix towards the better quality customers. We plan to focus a little more aggressively on certain segments, especially like the government segment. In auto loans, like I just mentioned to you, that in the last quarter, we have reason to believe we've gained a decent market share in the four-wheeler segment and think we are edging towards a leadership position, which we'd like to capitalize over this financial year, both in new cars as well as used cars, because I think that gives a semblance of a better yield as well.

In mortgages, homes, and loans against property businesses, we are originating and growing faster than the previous years. If I were to take any insights and share with you for the first 15 days trends for the month of July 2021, HDFC Bank is echoing the projection of almost 100% of pre-COVID levels on the disbursement. That gives me the optimism that the Q2, which is July, August, and September, we should be in a position to scale up rapidly on our growth rates. It also gives us the confidence that the plan set for the financial year, which we had envisaged during our original assessment before the surprise second COVID wave hit us, in my view, should remain unaltered.

Our assessment and our belief is that we should be back on course to achieve the original financial year plans and should close the year on a solid growth for the financial year. I think that should probably give you guys a sense on how the quarter was from how I see the financial year. Yeah, that's all I think. Thank you.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Okay. Thank you. Jimmy, you want to talk about commercial?

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

Yeah, sure. This will be a little quicker than the retail one because it's relatively steady and boring. A few quick words on the SME portfolio and then on the corporate one as well. To point out just one thing on the SME portfolio, I think the second wave was something that impacted customers quite a bit, and when I give you a few details little later, you'll realize how. That said, the portfolio has held up well, and I really want to thank our customers, I think, for the kind of allegiance, integrity, and faith that they have shown. I really think that they have worked very well to keep their businesses well and to keep their credit quality intact. I think a large part of the credit for the portfolio success must be given to our customers right now.

When it comes to a few headline numbers, we monitor, as I mentioned earlier, the delinquency in various buckets. Every single bucket, the delinquency numbers are actually improving quarter-on-quarter, which is quite surprising given what happened during the last quarter. It has been there. We have a 7, 15, 30 and 60 pre-NPA bucket that we look at, and it's actually improved quarter-on-quarter in each of those buckets. That's why I really want to hold out for our customers. I think another thing one must put out for them is, if you look at the utilization, despite the stress they must have faced, the average utilization remains range bound in a 70%-75% of the limit sanctioned bracket. Once again, showing that people are not drawing down from us just to fund out losses or doing things like that.

It's remaining very steady now for several quarters. Very gratifying to see the quality of customers that have come to our bank, and it's really holding us in good stead at this point in time. Nothing very different than usual to report in terms of the portfolio distribution, extremely granular, everything under 5%, every single industry, except of course for the agriculture where there is directed lending and we are required to take higher shares, which is around 10% or so of the SME book. When it comes to the delinquency trends, I just mentioned to you that it's moving in the right direction even during the pandemic. I need to then tell you a little on the incremental NPAs for the quarter have actually been lower than those of the previous quarter, which probably not surprising given the earlier delinquency trends I mentioned.

The gross NPA levels also remain very range bound. We have the few measures that we have to monitor the portfolio, so just to give a slightly futuristic view. The self-funding ratio I've been talking about over the last few calls, so I'm not going to describe it again. Once again, holding out very steadily between a 67%-72% kind of range. Collateralization of the portfolio, again, is rather high, well into the mid 80%s. That's if you look at the exposure. If you actually look at the outstanding on the drawn limits, we are more than 100% collateralized on the SME book. The other thing that we monitor individually on all our customers is the net credit. The average net credit into the accounts obviously had dipped in April and May, and it has moved right back to the mean.

There's an actual mean reversal by the month of June, and we expect July to be even better. One more signal of strength out over there. We also follow the GST trends of the portfolio and how that matches into the cash flows into the accounts. Once again, very strong correlation, and this has been now going on for several quarters. The behavioral score, as you will know, I'd mentioned some time back that we have this 1-10 behavioral score, based on several attributes. These aren't really to be linked to delinquency because these are non-delinquent customers. We look at cash flow repaying in relation to business, the banking habits, the manner in which the operations are carried out and all such things. It is actually a behavioral score, it is not a credit score.

Those did take some sort of a dip in April or so, but have once again started recovery out again. That's about it on the SME book. A small update on the GCL. As you know, GCL 1 we were kind of market leaders. GCL 2 and 3 were for the stressed sectors, so we don't have that much out to those sectors. Even what we do have out in GCL 2 and 3, I would regard not even 10% of that book to be in any kind of stress. It is mainly for people's business growth and opportunities. That kind of puts paid to the SME piece that I wanted to speak of. I think the corporate is even more staid and steady. We've retained the kind of portfolio quality that we had.

Growth in the corporate assets, not as strong as many previous quarters because we don't change policies, we don't change credit judgment. If we found a few fewer in a particular quarter, that's what we would do. The book remains very strong. I think now it's been five or so quarters where it has been range bound into our internal rating of 4.3, 4.4. I do always mention, and will mention today also, that there is considerable headroom in this particular borrower grading before it even moves out of a double A kind of range. If it were to move into a 4.5, 4.6, and I'm not going to give you the actual number, but it goes well beyond, you would still see a very strong portfolio. The unsecured wholesale portfolio is a 3.5-rated portfolio on an average.

Here, that's all I have to say. I think external ratings, if you want a benchmark, I would think if you look at the AAA and AA portfolio, it would probably be close to 80% of the book. At least 50% of our book is on an HTD one to four rated scale. Things are all right. No big slippages to report. Nothing of that sort. Things are happily boring in both these segments for us, so we don't have too much of a problem. Rahul, you want to talk about the business part of it?

Rahul Shukla
Group Head of Commercial and Rural Banking, HDFC Bank

Sure. I'll try and wrap up quickly because I think we are horribly over time. Commercial and Rural Banking had an end of period growth in total assets of 24% YoY and 4% quarter-on-quarter. While well below what I believe to be the potential growth rate of the underlying businesses, it was achieved under limited activity in the first two months of the quarter. The business broke out of historically low quarter-on-quarter growth rate for the June quarter, where it had ranged between ± 1% over the last three or four years. On a sequential averages basis, growth was 6.5% over March quarter average, providing strong earnings momentum. As we look ahead, given the opening of economy and the normal seasonality effect, growth outlook is better in both the September and December quarters.

Barring third wave's impact, each of the businesses are expected to do much better in the current quarter. Within CRB, our mid-market segment, while being fully self-funded, saw a 25% YoY growth and 8% quarter-on-quarter growth. On a quarterly basis, we saw credit uptake across a broad spectrum of industries such as metals and mining, manufacturing and engineering, auto and ancillaries, agri, food, beverages, et cetera. Growth was from both existing and a very strong new-to-bank client addition. The business remains on track to expand its footprint over 100 cities by the end of the year. We see growth in CapEx demand in sectors such as steel, textiles, chemicals, durables, paper and packaging, food processing, tractors, et cetera. Impact of lifting of moratorium has been neutral in this business. Our business banking or wholesale SME business saw an asset growth of 33% YoY and 4% quarter-on-quarter, and remained largely self-funded.

To be honest, I had higher expectations out of this business. We saw record customer acquisitions when you look historically at the June quarter. New NPA creation remained at a flat run rate to last year and say 50% lower than probably two years ago. Overdraft utilizations were at 70% while exiting June. Our emerging enterprises group or retail SME business had a 52% year-over-year growth and 9% quarter-on-quarter asset growth while being fully self-funded. June saw a record disbursement when markets opened up from COVID restrictions. We feel very good about this portfolio, which pretty much went through an agni- pariksha last year. If you recall, in May 2020, the MSME sector had a 13% capacity utilization nationally. Still our portfolio has come out completely unscathed.

Our transportation finance business, a mix of working capital and EMI businesses, remained flat over prior quarter, which was a strong quarter, the March quarter, and about 8% up YoY. Markets were opened largely in June when aggregate volumes of commercial vehicle, construction equipment, and tractors increased 109% in volumes in June over the month of May. We increased our volumes by 160%. As a result, our June market share in MHCV was 29%. We remained muted intentionally on LCV and ULCV segments, but increased our tractor market share to slightly over 5% from below 5%. Q2 should be steady with manufacturers expecting pent-up demand for Q2 on the back of low sales in Q1.

In construction equipment, the indicators are quite positive with machine usage having improved to 42 and a half hours per week for backhoe loaders and 31.7 hours for excavators mid-June, which are peak levels of last financial year. With the focus of government on infrastructure, road and mining segments, this segment remains poised for growth in the current quarter. Our large in market share but small in size healthcare finance business saw a quarterly decline of 4%. Hospital overdraft utilizations came down drastically with very strong cash flows during the last quarter. Since March 2020, elective surgery is down by almost 50%. Government settling receivables promptly led to negative working capital requirement in the sector. Lastly, our rural banking business had approximately 19% YoY advances growth and a -2% quarter-on-quarter growth. Negative QoQ is the normal trend. It was lower than past because of granular disbursements.

While sowing is delayed in some parts, it is not derailed. With delayed sowing in certain areas, related credit uptake is postponed from June to July. We have a strong outlook for the current quarter. Collections were impacted in early part of the quarter, but are on in full swing since. This is a different collection cycle given interest and repayment dues of last three half-yearly cycles, which is March 2020, September 2020, and March 2021, have accumulated and are being collected. The impact of Cyclone Tauktae, which impacted 4,619 villages in mid-May, is also under observation, though it does not appear to be a major concern as of now. Thank you.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Okay. Thank you, Rahul. A couple of lines on [ CAFIR]. Capital adequacy, we have reported that Basel III guidelines stood at 19.1% as against regulatory requirement, which was 11.075%. Prior year was at 18.9%. Tier-1, 17.9% compared to 17.5% in prior year. You know that the bank declared dividend INR 6.5 per equity share for FY 2021. That had been reckoned in the capital ratios. Getting to wrap up on HDB, a word on HDB before we go. The disbursements in the quarter showed a growth of 66% over prior year, because prior year was hardly anything. It is down 54% over Q4. Again, significant impact from COVID. The AUM stood at INR 59,368 crore. Net interest income for the quarter, INR 964 crore, a drop of 10% over Q1 last year. PPOP for the quarter at INR 644 crore, a drop of 15% over previous year and 35% sequentially.

Provisions were INR 472 crore and the profit after tax in HDB was INR 131 crore. The delinquencies were significantly impacted. We'll have two minutes from Ramesh to talk about that. As of June end, the gross NPAs per NBFC recognition methodology was at 7.75%. Prior quarter was at 3.89%. Ramesh, you want to talk about two minutes about a few things on HDB, please?

Ramesh Ganesan
Managing Director and CEO, HDB Financial Services

Sure. I think, as compared to what the bank does, we lend to a set of customers who are notch below. I think the challenge or the, I mean, a feature of this segment is that when there's a problem, it shows up immediately. Unlike a prime customer where he might have some savings, which he can continue to service his loans for some more time, the customer segment that we service, the problem show up immediately. I think that's what you kind of see in this quarter. It's good in a way also because we know immediately what corrective action has to be taken. One of the challenges, I think, for last quarter was that in some markets, including some large markets, NBFCs are not treated as either exempt or exemption.

We actually had to keep our branches shut, or we had to keep our branches open for barely one or two hours a day. That impacted collections and putting feet on the ground. We did postpone quite a bit of normal collection activity, including auctions that we might have done of collaterals that we normally can quickly do and collect. We have not done any asset sales or any restructuring in the last quarter. Again, we like to see some cash flow before we get into any restructuring activity. I think some of the work that we did in last year did show up in very positive momentum with customers in Q4 last year, but we will see how this quarter pans out. I think we are quite hopeful. I think the last 10 days of June and early July look much better.

Just like problems show up quickly, they also get addressed quickly because customers like to come back on track. That's the summary. Srini?

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Thank you. I just want to add a couple of more matters in terms of the liquidity remains pretty strong at over 200% and ability to borrow at attractive rates even now. Coupled with strong capital position, which is close to 20%, as you described, well-positioned for market opportunities. With that, we can summarize, but I do want to give one last shout-out to the staff. Despite all of this COVID complexities, for most of the quarter, our teams across functions enthusiastically handled customer engagement in implementing our strategy. We do need to give a shout-out of thanks to all of them. With that, we may request the operator to open up the line for questions, please.

Operator

Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, 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 limit their questions to two per participant. If time permits, you may join the queue for any follow-ups. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. First question is on the line of Mahrukh Adajania from Elara Capital. Please go ahead.

Mahrukh Adajania
Analyst, Elara Capital

Yeah, hi. My first question is on slippage. Just to clarify, the absolute value of slippage would be around INR 73 billion, of which around INR 9 billion would be agri. Would there be a further breakdown into SME, unsecured retail, secured retail, if possible? Also, what is the total quantum of standard restructured book in HDB Financials?

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Okay. One, the numbers that you quoted are right. The further breakup of the slippage is not something that we have published. So I am unable to provide that. In terms of HDB Restructuring 2.0, Ramesh alluded to say that there was no restructuring done in 2.0. The team is evaluating to see, looking at the cash flows in terms of what can be done and when it should be done.

Mahrukh Adajania
Analyst, Elara Capital

Was there any restructuring last year? What is the restructured book, the existing restructured book of HDB?

Ramesh Ganesan
Managing Director and CEO, HDB Financial Services

Yeah. Last year, as of March 31st, our restructured books stood at about INR 3,650 crore and out of that, about INR 120 crore was credit impaired as on March 31st.

Mahrukh Adajania
Analyst, Elara Capital

Okay, thanks. Was there any slippage in the ECLGS book in the main bank?

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

ECLGS, no.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Not material, Mahrukh.

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

Jimmy here. Hi.

Mahrukh Adajania
Analyst, Elara Capital

Hi.

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

Not material, if at all. I don't have data with me, but not material.

Mahrukh Adajania
Analyst, Elara Capital

Okay, just one more question. In terms of fee income, if you see the absolute value, it's lower than second quarter last year, of course, because disbursements were also down. Probably they were not lower than second quarter last year. Would a substantial part of it also be because of cards?

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

It is cards. Retail assets also is there. Third-party fees is also lower, which is the distribution of third-party products fees is lower. It is little marks here and there across a few lines.

Mahrukh Adajania
Analyst, Elara Capital

Okay. Thank you. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Thank you. Next question is from the line of Kunal Shah from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.

Kunal Shah
Analyst, ICICI Securities

Yeah, thanks for taking the question. Firstly, on slippages, can you just say in terms of since there has hardly been any restructuring, say under 2.0, how much could be of a technical nature, actually? Maybe compared to the earlier run rates when there was first wave, we had not seen this kind of slippages running through the quarter. Just want to get some sense in terms of, is there any technicality and we could see a good upgrade coming in the next few quarters?

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

We would expect so. The slippages are elevated, and we haven't been able to get to the market to get the collections done for most of the quarter. I alluded to 35, 40 days of where effectively we could do something. Jimmy also mentioned about the activity in a positive light, late June, early July, in terms of the recoveries and in terms of the action on the feet on street that's happening.

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

Kunal, hi, Jimmy here. We do expect to have better recoveries in the current quarter. We do also expect that people in the current quarter might come for restructuring based on the basic fundamentals that I described little earlier. We are looking at restructuring people and are looking at being empathetic about it. The recent RBI clarification that someone who has slipped, which at this stage would have been reckoned, will be upgraded as standard as well. If we found meritorious cases in those, that could also happen, but essentially it will be on actual recoveries and collections. We do expect that.

Kunal Shah
Analyst, ICICI Securities

Sure. In terms of restructuring compared to 0.7% under OTR 1, broadly, do we think that it can still be contained below it or maybe since it's not existing with the moratorium. What is the current assessment in terms of how can restructuring actually play out under 2.0?

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

The way in which we would look at restructuring is, has somebody had a temporary setback because of COVID? That's the essence and spirit behind what we would really look at. If someone has had this sort of a setback, he would recover, and if we do believe that he would recover, of course, within the two-year horizon that has been given as a maximum by the Reserve Bank, we will restructure such people.

Kunal Shah
Analyst, ICICI Securities

Okay. Any trends in terms of how can it be overall?

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

I'm sorry, I didn't get that.

Kunal Shah
Analyst, ICICI Securities

No. In terms of the trends, whether it can be lower, it can be higher, maybe based on our earlier assessment out there.

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

No, I don't have any feeling right now as to whether it would be higher or not. There hasn't been a rush for it. That's all I could perhaps say.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

When it comes up, it's a case-by-case basis more than any mass type of an activity or a program-based activity.

Kunal Shah
Analyst, ICICI Securities

Sure. Thanks. Yeah.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Next question is from the line of Abhishek Murarka from HSBC. Please go ahead.

Abhishek Murarka
Analyst, HSBC

Yeah, good evening. Thanks for taking the question. The first question is on cards. I just wanted to check, when you said that the interest income growth would have been 6% higher YoY. How much of that would have been because your card business slowed down?

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Rather than looking at cards in isolation, two things. One is lower yielding asset mix, but also contributed by lower card fees and revolver balances.

Abhishek Murarka
Analyst, HSBC

For sure.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

If you look at the balances, we grew cards from little more than INR 54,000 crore- INR 60,000 crore year-on-year. Right?

Abhishek Murarka
Analyst, HSBC

Right.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

The revolving balances are down. Right? While absolute receivables are up, the revolving balance customers are down. That means either people have been cautious in revolve, we have cut back on credit lines, or they have been delinquent over the last 12 months and didn't come here, or they are restrictions, right? Under whatever circumstances, that's a contributory factor.

Abhishek Murarka
Analyst, HSBC

Srini, if we try to understand, let's say, of your total income, if I combine NII and fee income, what % would be cards? Just trying to get a broad sense. Can you give us just some sort of understanding over there?

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

People have been asking us to produce card P&L and publish it so it could be benchmarked with the monoline card businesses, but something that not we have done so far. We'll give a thought to your question about whether we should publish the card P&L. We'll give a thought to it, but that's not something we have done.

Abhishek Murarka
Analyst, HSBC

Okay. Because separately, if I benchmark and try to calculate, it comes to a pretty huge number, which seems a little incorrect. I was just trying to get a sense, any kind of broad ballpark. It comes to about 40%-50% of your fee income, just the fee part, not the fund part. Just checking.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

What is the 40%-50% you're relating to?

Abhishek Murarka
Analyst, HSBC

Just the card contribution to the fee. I know it cannot be so high.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

The card contribution to the fee, while we've not published that, I think in the past calls we have talked about.

Abhishek Murarka
Analyst, HSBC

Right.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

It could range from 25% to 1/3, depending on the quarter about the robustness of how the other products, like third party insurance products, seasonally could be quite strong in the March quarter. That time, the card contribution can go down. In a festival quarter, think about the October to December quarter, the card contribution can go up.

Abhishek Murarka
Analyst, HSBC

Right.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

It can swing between 25% to, that is one-fourth to one-third. You can think about that as the card.

Abhishek Murarka
Analyst, HSBC

This you're talking about the CEB, right? Commission, exchange, and brokerage. You're talking about the total non-interest income?

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

No, I was talking about the cards fees and commissions.

Abhishek Murarka
Analyst, HSBC

Yeah. As a % of the CEB?

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Just fee income. Yeah, percentage of the fee income.

Abhishek Murarka
Analyst, HSBC

Yeah. Sure. Just any indication from the RBI in terms of their satisfaction or in terms of their timeline?

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

No. We are awaiting communication. I think we alluded in some other context or another call...

Abhishek Murarka
Analyst, HSBC

Sure.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

..was submitted and it's with RBI, and it is receiving their attention.

Abhishek Murarka
Analyst, HSBC

Okay. Sorry, just slipping in one more question about restructuring. Under the older RBI scheme, how much was the restructuring and how much of it was SME?

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Total restructuring is what we have shown. I think as of March, we published certain things, but most of it was, I think, relating to retail. There was a few which were non-retail. As of March, we have published. The next publication we'll do in that, I think, is required to be done by September, which we'll do.

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

Abhishek, the bulk would be retail on that. SME would not be very large.

Abhishek Murarka
Analyst, HSBC

Okay.

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

Portfolio sizes, SME would not be very large.

Abhishek Murarka
Analyst, HSBC

Okay. Just one data keeping point. If you could break up the ECLGS into 1.0, 2.0 , 3.0, just broadly, that would be useful. Thanks.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

So-

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

You want to do it?

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

What did you want ECLGS in terms of amounts?

Abhishek Murarka
Analyst, HSBC

How much was, yeah.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Yeah. ECLGS 1.0 is slightly over INR 30,000 crore.

Abhishek Murarka
Analyst, HSBC

Right.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

2.0 and 3.0 put together would be about INR 2,500 crore- INR 3,000 crore in all.

Abhishek Murarka
Analyst, HSBC

Okay.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

That would be roughly 9% or 10% of the overall volumes. ECLGS 4.0, many of the customers of ECLGS 1.0 in our case.

Abhishek Murarka
Analyst, HSBC

Yeah.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Since they are not restructured and they don't want to be restructured, I think, we'll have very limited or pretty much non-material negligible eligibility in terms of our portfolio.

Abhishek Murarka
Analyst, HSBC

Have they increased it to 30% of loans? If they do, that opens up a pretty big window.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

There was a ministry announcement. There is a detailed announcement, I think, that should have come from RBI. What it requires is that when you go from 20%- 30%, you also have to restructure, and there is a provision that has to be taken. That is at least my understanding. We haven't yet formulated even a policy, looking at that, because we don't think that prima facie our portfolio will have a lot of demand or request, and we haven't got inquiries. If it comes, we will basically take a look at that. Every single one of the ECLGS, as it moved towards the stressed sector, I think, our portfolio, which was eligible or people who were going to take it just kept dropping by, as I gave you the breakup between 1.0 and the balance.

Abhishek Murarka
Analyst, HSBC

Okay. Perfect. Thank you so much for the answers. Thanks and have a good weekend.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Next question is from the line of Shagun Varma from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Speaker 13

Yeah. Hi, good evening, everyone. This is Rahul here. Just a couple of questions. Just data keeping, what was the write-off for this quarter?

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Write-off, about INR 3,100 crore or so was the write-off. Annualized little more than 1%, little more than 1.05% it will work out to. Yeah, INR 3,100 crore.

Speaker 13

Okay. Thanks, Srini. What was it last year, Srini? Full year?

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Last year, I don't have it in front of me. Yeah, the team will see if they have, but we'll come back.

Speaker 13

Sure. Thanks, Srini. The other question is on the restructuring bit. The retail restructuring that we have, which is about INR 55 billion or thereabout, can we get some color? Is it more unsecured or it is on the consumption side or the commercial side, retail, which is less than 5 crore loans? Just wanted to get a color of restructuring.

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

Well, the retail restructuring split between unsecured and secured is like a 2/3, 1/3 kind of split.

Speaker 13

Okay. Two third is unsecured, if we call it.

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

Yes. Absolutely.

Speaker 13

Thank you.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Rahul, on the write-off question that you had last year, same time period, little less than half of what I gave you for this quarter. It was about INR 1,500 crore or so.

Speaker 13

Sorry, this is for the first quarter last year or full year?

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Correct. June quarter.

Speaker 13

Okay. Full year, you would have it handy, just in case?

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

I think full year is published. Full year is published somewhere. We will get to you, but it is published.

Speaker 13

Sure. The other question is on the margins. Just wanted to get some qualitative color. Clearly, I mean, of course, one-third of the operations were impacted in the previous quarter. The impact that we may have seen quarter-on-quarter, is it largely because of liquidity or there's a pricing pressure also that we are seeing in the market?

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

I think the same three, four items come in. One is the asset mix. That includes the card revolver balances. If you look at the card balances from around INR 64,000 crore, I think we published the card balances INR 64,000 crore last quarter. This quarter, INR 60,000 crore, INR 60,500 or something this quarter. A significant piece of that reduction is the revolver balances reduction. The revolving balances have come down. People haven't revolved as much. That is the one significant contribution. The lower mix because you see that the retail slightly contracted and the wholesale went up. That gives you the mix impact that comes with it. That is another one.

The higher interest reversals due to delinquencies, you can see that the slippages that we gave you at about 2.54% or little more than INR 7,000 crore, do have impacts on the interest income that you reverse out. Of course, the other one is the 93% Cash Reserve Ratio is a predictable and is a known one which expired late March, so that is another impact.

Speaker 13

Got it. That's pretty helpful. Srinivasan, just one last question on HDB Financial Services. The performance over the last, let's say, five, six quarters has been subpar. Now, we understand the environment has been challenging, but what really is the game plan here? The ROEs have been subpar. The tier 1s have been around 13%-14%. Would we need to infuse capital in that, or how are you thinking about that business now? Of course, there is still not much of a clarity from the regulators on the new regulations, correct me if I'm wrong. That was the last one from my side. Thank you.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Thank you. I can give some thoughts. I think we also alluded to in another earlier meeting today about that. We have seen that financial services industry, as such, continues to be very robust, which we see through the recent capital raising of the M&A transaction types. Certainly high quality, well-governed growth businesses, we do expect would have a good kind of take-up. Particularly HDB, which is in the segment of small enterprises, merchants, and consumers, is very attractive to global or domestic investors. In the past, we have seen domestic or international investors evincing interest in the growth plans of HDB, which suggests that they were keenly watching and noting that. At the right stage, we'll evaluate what is the appropriate step in that we need to take.

We'll ensure at any point in time, HDB is adequately capitalized in any case, and is able to capture the growth as this COVID wave subsides, that we're able to capture. We keep the options open, and we will take the appropriate time about what is possible.

Speaker 13

Got it. capital raising can be met from the outside investors, what I'm thinking of from your response.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

There's no decision as such, but quite possible that in the past, people have evinced interest in conversations. We'll have to see how at an appropriate time. At this moment, the capital ratio is close to 20%, well-capitalized. We do need to see with this COVID behind and the growth momentum starting to pick, then we'll have an evaluation. We may test the market in terms of price discovery and so on at any time. When we do that, then there will be any kind of methods we can use to do that, but we'll keep the options open on that process today.

Speaker 13

Thank you, Srini.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Suresh Ganapathy from Macquarie. Please go ahead.

Suresh Ganapathy
Analyst, Macquarie

Yeah, hi. Just two quick questions. One is on the Mastercard ban. I mean, now that you can't launch debit cards with Mastercard payment platform, will it affect liability account addition? How do you plan to transition to Visa for all the Mastercard debit cards? Credit card anyways, you're not doing, so I'm just wondering about this debit card issue.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Thanks for asking. It's a very relevant and topical situation, that one. We have only a couple of instances where we are tied to Mastercard for debit cards. The Times Debit Card, which is an age-old card, which is a co-brand. There is one more which is there. It's a business debit card, another one. These are the only ones where it is tied. Other than that, we have a choice of having a Visa debit card. The alternatives are quite open for us, and we do not see any disruption or inhibition to go to the alternatives other than where the co-branding is higher, like the Times example I gave. We do see that we have choices to make there, and quite possible that we will do.

Suresh Ganapathy
Analyst, Macquarie

In that sense, what you're saying is both RuPay or Visa can easily provide you the necessary amount of plastics required. There is a shortage of chips in the global market, but that all is not an issue. They can immediately give you a commitment that if you want to issue Visa-based debit cards, they can easily do that. You're saying that there will not be any transition time from an integration perspective or anything like that?

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

We don't anticipate in the short run on that one. With the inventory that we have and the orders that are in the pipeline and so on, we feel quite comfortable on that in the short run.

Suresh Ganapathy
Analyst, Macquarie

Okay.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

If the chip shortage continues for a longer time, it's different. It's not just for us, it's an industry-level issue at that stage.

Suresh Ganapathy
Analyst, Macquarie

Okay.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

We'll have to go through that.

Suresh Ganapathy
Analyst, Macquarie

Okay. Just last question on the current accounting, of course, in general, the trends have been very encouraging for the last several quarters. Is it that you're really gaining market share from the MNC banks? I mean, that's just because they just cannot have credit-linked portfolio to current accounts. Are you really seeing a shift there or is it an organic growth?

Rahul Shukla
Group Head of Commercial and Rural Banking, HDFC Bank

Suresh, rather than basically try and forecast what will be the market share shift, at this point of time, suffice it to say that all the banks are very busy with execution of the current account circular because this is a regulatory priority. That is where we are. The way the circular is designed is that you need to have, in a simplistic way, a 10% credit out to a company to be able to have their flows unless it's in an escrow arrangement or some other arrangement. In that context, if you look at it, your report and the reports of other analysts that we read seem to indicate that the larger banks will have some positive flows. This trend will become clear only over the next six months-nine months period.

Suresh Ganapathy
Analyst, Macquarie

Okay. Thanks, Rahul.

Rahul Shukla
Group Head of Commercial and Rural Banking, HDFC Bank

Thank you.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Thank you.

Operator

Next question is from the line of M B Mahesh from Kotak Securities. Please go ahead.

M B Mahesh
Analyst, Kotak Securities

Good evening. Just two questions from my side. One is a question that Jimmy had kind of indicated earlier. You made a comment saying that the slippages were partly on account of employees or an internal constraint that you had. Given that the market activity picked up from, let's say, around June, how much do you think of the slippages of the current quarter could be attributed for an internal factor? Also, Mahrukh has asked this question earlier. If you could just kind of qualitatively, at least, give us some comment on what has been the nature of the slippages that have happened this quarter as compared to last year.

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

I'll just take the first part first, Mahesh. If you look at, as I mentioned, if you study it, the bounces are remaining consistent, customers are not bouncing more than they used to bounce, and this is over a good few months now. During the months of April and May, because we could not go out due to lockdowns as well as our own internal decisions, you had collections moving and resolutions not keeping pace across the buckets. That would include the slippages as well. From June onwards, we have noticed that there is a reversal in all these the moment we started going out. It was in the last two, three days of May that we started preparing to go out and conduct the collections again. We've been therefore doing it for the month of June.

There has been a well-noticed recovery in all buckets of resolutions right from the very first, even into the recovery buckets, as I mentioned. Even the recoveries are actually moving in the right direction, and July is further encouraging on a trend of that. If that answers your first question, or is there anything more? That's the simple way to put it, that the portfolio integrity remains intact and June and July are showing that the trend of April and May would be reversed.

M B Mahesh
Analyst, Kotak Securities

I just wanted to just check the fact that if I were to break the issue into two fronts, one is an internal issue and the other one is an external constraint caused by COVID.

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

Yeah.

M B Mahesh
Analyst, Kotak Securities

Was internal issue a dominating factor or not of the slippages that you're seeing this quarter?

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

Firstly, the internal issue was also COVID.

M B Mahesh
Analyst, Kotak Securities

Yeah.

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

The internal issue is also COVID and nothing else. It was a health-first decision that was taken. How much was due to lockdowns and how much was due to that decision? I really don't have the breakup because the lockdowns were essentially Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, and some parts of Andhra, Karnataka. We haven't really calculated it that way.

M B Mahesh
Analyst, Kotak Securities

Sure. First, understandable. The second part of the question was qualitatively, if you can just give us some indication or comments on what is the difference in slippages that you're seeing in this quarter as compared to last year?

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

I'm sorry, could you just say that again?

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

If qualitatively, slippages by various subcategories in terms of last year, Mahesh, last year, June quarter, is not comparable at all because one, there was moratorium. Because of the moratorium, you will not be able to see what is what and make a comparison of what that is versus this quarter.

M B Mahesh
Analyst, Kotak Securities

We are just looking at the full year because we're just looking at the full year numbers. If I were to look at the slippages which happened last year on the retail side or on the business banking side, and you look at the slippages this quarter, are you seeing any noticeable differences in what is causing the two?

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

Business banking, no. Since you mentioned business banking, no.

M B Mahesh
Analyst, Kotak Securities

Yeah.

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

If you look at last year versus this year on the retail side, last year had six months of moratorium followed by the option of restructuring to December, which also for the MSME segment went out into March because of the MSME itself. This time, we have just emerged from the second wave with a recent announcement of restructuring, which we have put into effect as fast as we could with, as we mentioned, a host of channels through which someone can apply. However, not that many have applied. That said, it happened in the last instance as well. People do tend to apply towards the end. Whereas what you see as the slippages right now have not been mitigated so much by restructuring, there could be some request for restructuring coming during the current present quarter in which we are.

We'd have to wait and see to what extent that happens.

M B Mahesh
Analyst, Kotak Securities

Sorry. We're just trying to understand only the slippages, not so much of what the outcome of the slippages will be. Is there a material difference that last year was driven by certain segments and this year is different by a different segment?

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

No. Not at all. There's no change in segments. No.

M B Mahesh
Analyst, Kotak Securities

Okay. Perfect. Okay, done. Thanks a lot.

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Amit Premchandani from UTI. Please go ahead.

Amit Premchandani
Analyst, UTI

Good evening, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. In the annual report, there was a disclosure about restructuring under the MSME 2019 window. What is the number after this quarter?

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

There is no further update than what is in the annual report.

Amit Premchandani
Analyst, UTI

The restructuring number that you reported under the MSME window, that was also done last year, or it was previous to that and just reporting it was done last year?

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

One, that the MSME window has been open even for the previous year. FY 2020 was also open, and they could have been some in the recent years that went by too.

Amit Premchandani
Analyst, UTI

Okay. Sir, does share public sector lending, as a percentage of overall lending has moved up quite sharply over the last two years from around 3%- 11% of the portfolio. What is the overall impact on margins of this public sector lending, given that they should be a much lower yield?

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

That is part of the mix that I called out, which is these are very highly rated from a spread point of view. They have a thin spread, right? Because if you think about AAA, AA type of spread, even in the market that you see a two-year, three-year, has come down over a period of last 12 months, 18 months. All through this time period, there has been a tightening of spreads across all of those years. That is part of the mix that we talked about.

Amit Premchandani
Analyst, UTI

And sir-

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

The public sector enterprises to whom we have lent are the best of the best. Extremely strong credit quality, and therefore, yes, they would come at a price. I think spreads have been narrowing across the board from retail loans down to corporate loans over the last 18 months or so. We always like to have a high portfolio quality, and that's why we would select such clients.

Amit Premchandani
Analyst, UTI

Is there any change from a management point of view about lending to public sector, especially over the last two years, given the sharp jump that we have seen?

Jimmy Tata
Chief Credit Officer, HDFC Bank

If the opportunities arise and they are considered safe, we will lend. I don't think there is a philosophical change, no. If that's your question, no. We have always been ready to lend to highly rated corporates, and I think in the current environment, it would be even safer in the highly rated government companies.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Jimmy, also to add, in the last two years, Amit, the gross capital formation has been driven by government and public sector. You would expect banks lending to them to go up, right?

Amit Premchandani
Analyst, UTI

Sure. Sir, if I can squeeze in the last question, what is the overall impact on priority sector commitments of this shift to public sector or non-priority sector kind of segment?

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

The priority sector lending, the MSME, that is an evolving definition. We've had certain clarifications in terms of particularly the traders. Rahul and the team on the MSME is working through those clarifications that have come, and we will settle on that as we go along.

Amit Premchandani
Analyst, UTI

Are you meeting the various agriculture requirements of 40% small and medium farmers and MSMEs of this category, or you are trending towards more PSLC on an increasing basis?

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

We just couldn't hear you because the background, somebody is talking or it's a child's background, so just couldn't hear you much.

Rahul Shukla
Group Head of Commercial and Rural Banking, HDFC Bank

Amit, only always a mix of all instruments that a bank like us or large banks are going to use, whether it is PSLC or organic or buyouts, et cetera. You would not expect a bank to go out and not utilize any one of these elements because there are certain areas where there is margin, where there is risk. There are certain areas there's a cost, but there is no risk. The bank goes out and optimizes between the different instruments.

Amit Premchandani
Analyst, UTI

Thank you.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Thank you, sir.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that would be our last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Vaidyanathan for closing comments. Thank you and over to you, sir.

Srinivasan Vaidyanathan
CFO, HDFC Bank

Okay. Thank you all participants, and Aman, thank you for coordinating this. If there are further questions or comments, we will be happy to be engaged over the next whatever few time periods. We will see what information or analysis that you need. Thank you. With that, have a great evening, great weekend. Bye-bye.

Operator

Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of HDFC Bank Limited, that concludes this conference call. Thank you all for joining us and you may now disconnect your lines.