Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to RBL Bank Limited's Q4 FY 2026 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. R. Subramaniakumar, Managing Director and CEO of RBL Bank. Thank you, and over to you, Mr. Kumar.
Thank you, ma'am. First of all, my apologies for a couple of minutes late. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us for a discussion on our bank's financial results for the fourth quarter and the year-ended financial year 2026. We have uploaded the results along with the presentation on our website, and I hope you had a chance to go through it in detail ahead of this call. As always, I'm joined by Mr. Jaideep Iyer, our Executive Director, and other members of our management team to address any questions you may have. Before we get into the details on Q4 operational performance, I would like to briefly touch upon the macro trends. Demand conditions across our key customer segments remain broadly stable, with retail consumption and small business activity continuing in line with our recent trends.
Overall, the operating environment continues to support calibrated growth for well-capitalized banks with a balanced portfolio mix and a strong risk framework. We are not currently seeing any material impact on our portfolio arising from the conflict in the Middle East. In retail, the collection momentum in April has been broadly in line with our earlier trends, with no discernible disruption so far on the retail front. On the wholesale side as well, we have not seen any impact at this stage. That said, we remain cautious and selective across certain industry segments within wholesale and small business lending, and we will continue to closely monitor how the situation evolves. Importantly, our inherently risk-averse approach over the last few years puts us in a relatively strong position, particularly across the wholesale portfolio.
On the retail side, we have significantly skewed the business towards secured segments, which has enhanced the balance sheet resilience and positions us meaningfully better today compared to where we were 2-3 years ago. Now on to business trends on the quarter. We crossed a total business of INR 2.5 lakh crore during the quarter. Our advances grew 23% YoY to INR 114,232 crore, and deposits grew 25% YoY to INR 139,018 crore. The CD ratio stands comfortable at 82.2%. Within deposits, the granular deposits grew 16%. The granular term deposits grew faster at 24% YoY. The deposit momentum was also helped by growth in the wholesale customer deposits.
Within the overall advances, the secured retail assets grew 36% YoY, and JLG book grew 34% YoY. Let me also mention here that 98% of our disbursement in JLG is covered by CGFMU, and at the book level, approximately 95% of the standard book is covered. In the wholesale segment, our commercial banking business grew 30% YoY. The commercial banking continues to see growth driven by expansion in the relationship and the credit teams across the existing markets and selective expansion into new geographies. The large corporate business also grew 26% YoY. In credit cards, bank issued 3.3 lakh cards during Q4 FY 2026, with cards in force increasing to 4.63 million cards as of 31st March 2026.
The Q4 was the second quarter with a sequential increase in the cards in force after almost six or seven quarters of reduction. We have built traction in direct sourcing, with this contributing more than 90% of the acquisition. This includes co-brand cards where sourcing is done by RBL team. The branches are also stepping up on new sourcing to internal customers. Our net interest margin. On net interest margin front, bank's NIM reduced to 22 basis points during Q4 FY 2026. This is on account of the fact that yield on advances reduced by 50 basis points, mainly due to the impact of the repo rate cut in December 2025, and advances mix change plus surplus liquidity on balance sheet. This was partially offset by reduction in the cost of deposit by 28 basis points.
During the quarter, we accelerated the branch expansion by adding 23 branches and crossed the milestone of 600 branches, reaching a branch strength of 603. This momentum will continue as we enter new financial year, strengthening our physical footprint and to support growth across retail businesses. As we have mentioned earlier, we have made meaningful progress in leveraging branches for asset growth with increased branch-led sourcing across gold loan, working capital, secured business loans, home loans and credit cards. The disbursal from branches was INR 1,800 crore for the quarter versus INR 1,350 crore last quarter. Of this, the gold loan disbursal through branches was INR 850 crore for the quarter versus INR 540 crore last quarter. We expect the momentum to sustain as we go into the new fiscal.
Our wholly-owned subsidiary, RFL, as a sourcing channel for small ticket secured business loans and housing loans, is gaining traction and has the potential to become a meaningful contributor to the secured loan sourcing in the coming financial year. They will do it along with the JLG disbursals. Let me also articulate how we think about our growth architecture going forward. Around 40%-45% of our portfolio comprising corporate and commercial lending, which is clearly identified by us as a high growth, moderate to low risk with stable but relatively lower margins, will be an area where we continue to consistently execute and scale. Another 20%-25% of the portfolio comprising of credit cards and MFI will represent businesses that we approach with a calibrated growth mindset given the relatively higher risk profile but also the structurally higher margins.
Complementing this will be our retail secured portfolio of 35%-40%, which will diversify risk and returns and create a strong customer base for the bank. Together, these segments provide a balanced framework for the growth and profitability. Importantly, we believe we are well geared to pursue this construct, supported by the new capital coming into the bank and our continued expansion across locations and geographies, enabling us to scale in a reasonable and sustainable manner. On the progress of the announced capital infusion by Emirates NBD Bank, we have received RBI and CCI approvals. Approvals from the Government of India and the SEBI are in process.
In summary, as we look ahead to FY 2027, our growth priorities are clearly defined and focused on building a scalable, resilient and profitable franchise, continuing to build granular and stable liabilities with the objective of progressively narrowing the cost of deposit gap vis-a-vis larger peers, driving a more balanced and diversified retail asset mix with a faster growth in secured products alongside the targeted market share gains in secured business loans, housing loan and gold loan, enhancing profitability across secured retail asset segments through better pricing discipline, operating leverage and the product optimization, leveraging our branch network and RFL as a key sourcing channels to scale secured retail assets origination efficiently, deepening customer relationship by increasing product penetration across our existing liability customer base and credit card franchise.
In summary, we believe we are on the right trajectory for FY 2027 with a well-balanced, scalable and profitable growth engine anchored on stronger liabilities, a more secured-led retail asset mix, improved product level profitability, effective branch-led sourcing and a deeper engagement across our existing customer base. The incoming capital infusion from ENBD further strengthens our ability to accelerate the growth while remaining firmly focused on long-term profitability and resilience. This positions us well to scale up in a measured manner with the capital strength and execution discipline working together. Now I will invite Mr. Jaideep to take you through the financials in greater detail.
Thank you, Mr. Kumar, and good afternoon, everyone. Briefly touching on some of the specific aspects of our financial performance. We grew our net advances by 23% year-on-year and 11% sequentially to INR 1,14,232 crore. Retail advances grew by 20% year-on-year and 11% sequentially to INR 67,119 crore. As was just mentioned, the retail wholesale mix is 59% and 41%. Secured retail advances grew at 36% year-on-year and 17% sequentially. Within secured retail, business loans and housing loans grew 32% year-on-year and 7% sequentially. The disbursal for secured retail was about INR 5,400 crore for the quarter and INR 18,500 crore for the full year in FY 2026 versus INR 10,400 crore for last year.
Microfinance advances grew 34% year-on-year and 15% sequentially. Wholesale advances grew 28% year-on-year and 11% sequentially. Within this, commercial banking grew at 30% year-on-year and large corporates grew 26% year-on-year. As we mentioned in our exchange results earlier, in the month, early bucket efficiency in the microfinance segment for the month of March was 99.7% versus 99.5% for December 2025. Clearly, we've reached the most optimal collections on this segment. On credit cards, we issued 3.3 lakh cards during the quarter, reaching total cards outstanding at 4.63 million cards. This is the fourth month in a row where we've added sequentially the net cards re-additions as well, and we hope that this will start reflecting in the balances outstanding from Q1 onwards.
On deposits, total deposits grew at 25% year-on-year and 16% sequentially to INR 1,39,018 crore. Some of this was helped by period inflows in wholesale. CASA ratio stood at 33.6% as at March 31. Deposits less than INR 3 crore, an area of focus for us for the last two, three years at least, grew 16% year-on-year and 4% sequentially. Within this granular term, deposits grew faster at 24% year-on-year. Average LCR for the quarter was 130%, and CD ratio was at 82.2%. Our cost of total deposits for the quarter was down to 5.92% versus 6.2% last quarter.
Our cost of savings account balances for the quarter was 11 bps lower sequentially to 5.05%, as we had cut our rates in January 26. Our total cost of term deposits was down 24% to 7.05% versus 7.29% last quarter. On the operating performance, our net interest income was up 7% year-over-year and 1% sequentially to INR 1,671 crores. Other income was up 7%, both YoY and 2% sequentially to INR 1,069 crores. Core fee income grew 9% year-over-year and 10% sequentially to INR 1,057 crores. Total net income grew 7% year-over-year and 1% sequentially to INR 2,740 crores.
Our OpEx grew at 5% year-on-year and de-grew 1% sequentially to INR 1,785 crore for the quarter. Cost to income as a consequence was down to 65.1 versus 66.3 last quarter. Our operating profit, therefore, in this quarter grew 11% year-on-year and 5% sequentially to INR 955 crore. Net profit for the quarter, therefore, on a standalone basis was INR 230 crore versus INR 214 crore sequentially, the previous quarter, and INR 69 crore same time last year. In terms of asset quality, NPA and NPA ratio, GNPA was down 43 basis points QOQ to 1.45, and net NPA was down 15 basis points QOQ to 0.39. Coverage ratio was at 73.6%.
Our total net slippages for the quarter was INR 624 crore as compared to INR 711 crore last quarter. Net slippage in the wholesale was again flattish. In fact, - INR 1 crore aided by recoveries. Credit cards slippage, net slippage was INR 580 crore, and microfinance has now come down to INR 53 crore for the quarter. The rest of the retail was a negative of INR 8 crore, so more recoveries than slippages. Essentially, our slippages are pretty much coming from cards and a significantly reduced trend that we see on the microfinance portfolio.
The SMA book in microfinance is reduced to INR 84 crores as of March 31st, as compared to INR 124 crores as of December, clearly reflecting the improved collection efficiency, which I think is now clearly reached more than optimal levels, and we will expect it to be stable in this range for a while. The lower SMA book in as at March also naturally implies a reduction in slippages that we will expect in Q1 on the microfinance front. I would also like to add that 95% of our portfolio on MFI is now covered under CGSMU. We will expect to raise a claim of about INR 80 crores in the current year, which pertains to NPA that would have happened about a year back.
On provisioning, the total net provision on advances was INR 684 crore. Of this, cards was the bulk at INR 489 crore. In microfinance, it was INR 154 crore, and this was on account most of it being for standard asset provisioning, and similarly, wholesale for INR 7 crore, again, largely standard asset provisioning. Credit cost for the quarter was 65 basis points. On capital position, total capital was at 14.25%, and CET1 was 12.8% versus 14.9% and 13.45% as at December 31, 2025. With this, we will now open the session for Q&A.
Thank you very much, sir. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask questions may please press star and one on their touchtone phone. If you wish to withdraw yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. You may please press star and one to ask questions. The first question is from the line of Rikin Shah from IIFL Capital. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. I had four questions. I'll just break them down. The first one is, you know, if you could-
I'm sorry. Mr. Shah, your audio is not clear, sir. May we request you to kindly use your handset, please?
Is this better?
Yes, sir. Please continue.
Yeah. I had four questions. I'll ask them one after the other. The first one is on if you could quantify the quantum of transitory deposits from IHC in Q4. An extension to that is once the Emirates money comes in, hopefully in Q1, how should we think about the deposit growth in FY 2027 and 2028? Because that will be reasonably decent amount of capital. What would be the overall deposit growth plans? That's the first one. I'll ask the other three later.
Yeah. On the transient flow, approximately INR 5,000 crore-
INR 5,000 crore.
was the transient flow for the last few days
Got it.
in March and first couple of days in April. That's the transition. On deposit growth, you're right. I think we will kind of de-emphasize high cost deposits till we exhaust the equity funding that will come through in the near term. I think that ability to exhaust that should be give or take 9-12 months, post which I think we will again be back to having a growth in deposits in line with loan book. However, we will continue our efforts. Just one minute, Rikin. However, we will continue.
We will not let go of our efforts of retail deposits because it is LCR accretive, and we'll be focusing on that, which has been growing in the range of around 25%. We'll try to continue to grow that in that range.
Fair to say that FY 2027 deposit growth could be single-digit or low double-digit and FY 2028 then it catches up to 15%-20%. Would that be a fair assumption?
Yeah. I think it will be conscious. It will be a conscious attempt to ensure that we get the right deposits at the right optimal pricing, especially retail. We also foresee that because of a rating upgrade and the ability to target a significantly large, you know, number of wholesale customers who otherwise would have maybe not given us that much of an opportunity from a deposit standpoint. I think the interesting situation for us will be that there'll be a lot more supply than demand from our side on deposits, which should largely reflect itself in the cost of wholesale deposits and term deposits.
Got it. Fair. The second question is relating to margins. How much of residual term deposit repricing is remaining? When do you expect to cut the SA rates, and how should we incrementally think about NIMS ex of, you know, the benefit coming from the capital due to Emirates?
On term deposit repricing, I think more or less done. Some tail left, I would say, 5, 10 basis points here and there on that, which should come through in Q1. Obviously, this is also subject to the volatile conditions that may prevail from time to time on the liquidity front, depending on what's happening on the geopolitical front. But largely, I would say some tail left. Margin, therefore, I would expect Q1 to be flattish and after that, we should start seeing some increase in margins ex of capital mix. Partly also driven by the fact that we expect our, you know, credit card book to grow, which has been degrowing for almost a year and a half.
When would you plan to cut the SA rates? Is it after the money comes in or it can happen even before that?
Rikin, that's a continuing process. We've already cut close to 1.5% over the last 12 months or so, including the last cut in Q4.
December.
January, I think.
January, yeah.
That's a continuous process. I think the way we are trying to balance this is to ensure that we are able to cross sell to customers who are probably today only having a savings account relationship, so that as and when we cut the disruption, we don't lose customers. I think it's important to ensure that when we've built the franchise with customer relationships, it's important that just the rate factor is not a disruption. We will do it in a manner in which it is optimal for the bank in general. The trend over the next 12, 18 months clearly should be trending down.
Got it. The third question is pertaining to treasury. Would you be able to quantify the absolute quantum of AFS reserves? And also was there any impact from RBI's FX NOP rule in the fourth quarter?
Rikin, no material change in our AFS reserve in this quarter. Flattish.
Any impact of the RBI's FX NOP rule?
No, we were fortunately very light on that. We didn't have the necessity to reduce our positions because of the RBI guideline.
Yeah. Got it. I was saying the last question is on asset quality. I mean, you know, how much of aging provisions is still remaining in MFI? Because if your slippages are going down, but the provisions haven't come off, is that 25%, 50% more remaining or are we done? More importantly, you know, while you had earlier guided for credit costs to remain flattish and elevated until 1H, the concerning part is that the credit card PL slippages are still rising. Why is that happening? You know, if you could just throw some color on that.
On MFI, we are past the peak, and from here on, we should see the reflection of lower slippages that we have seen in the H2 starting to flow through in the provisioning numbers. You know, we will kind of become equivalent to the slippage kind of our run rate by Q2 or so. On cards, Vikram, I think we've made the statement even in the last quarter that we will have elevated slippages for 2-3 quarters. I think we have now clear visibility that you know the slippages that we have is a matter of H1 at max. If you look at early bucket resolutions, we are able to now quite confidently say that we should materially reduce slippages in H2.
Mm-hmm.
We should come down to our slippage numbers or more closer to 7%, 7.5% in H2, and therefore, a credit cost for the card portfolio closer to 5.5% in H2. That's the leading indicators that we are clearly now seeing quite distinctly. We will have to live with this slightly more elevated slippages for the H1 of this year of the coming year.
Got it.
Other than the card.
Yeah, sorry, sir. Go ahead, please.
Yeah, yeah. Other than the card, if you look at that, I mean, you can see in our presentations also. The wholesale and retail secured, which all put together, they are considered 74% of the book, doesn't show any slippage, and it will continue to maintain that.
Got it. Where do you think in H2 the normalized credit cost settle given the book mix we have? Of course, it will remain elevated about at 250 basis points per your guidance. Once all of this normalizes, where do they settle?
If you look at the current credit cost contribution, I think almost 90+% is coming from cards and MFI. MFI, as I mentioned, should start normalizing from Q1 and should become in line with the slippages, latest by Q2. That kind of dramatically reduces. In cards, you know, let's say 20% of the book is cards simplistically, and if we come down to, let's say, 5.5% or 6% or so, then we are talking about 1.1%, 1.2% there. You know, the rest of it should be not more than 30, 40 basis points.
I wouldn't call this a guidance, but if I'm doing the math, I think we should come down to the 1.5% range for the H2.
Got it. Perfect. Thank you so much. Those are all my questions.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jai Mundhra from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, good afternoon, sir. Two questions. First is, while you mentioned that the yields have dropped because of the repo rate change and the adverse loan mix, but I wanted to check that you would have this option even going ahead that, you know, you can look at absolute growth while let us say, growing in some of the areas such as wholesale or secured credit, which would have an implication on the yield even going forward without even assuming a repo rate to be stable. Do you have any NIM threshold or yield threshold? Because you would have this choice even going ahead. Just an observation with that, the yield that we disclose in gold, affordable housing, Prime LAP, BBG looks in my opinion much lower than the peer sets. Any comments there?
The trend on yields and advances, Jai, I think the way we would look at it is that the compensation on margins should be driven through cost to assets and through provisioning line, both clear visibility as we move forward. On the provisioning, I just mentioned the cards impact. On cost to assets, as we scale up our secured assets, we've told this in the past, it's been an investment year for us last year, and maybe you know year before that when we were growing our secured assets and you know when the growth rates are 50%, 60%, cost of acquisition does tend to be materially high. These are relatively low-margin businesses as compared to unsecured businesses.
The traction has to come from cost to assets. When the secured retail assets begins to get materially profitable, as we move forward in the current financial year, we expect that to you know progress. We've already broken even on that business in Q3, Q4, and we should start seeing contribution to net profit from that business. It will also mean that the quality of return then materially improves because it's coming on the back of a lower variable asset quality business rather than a higher variable asset quality business. We also have material opportunity to reduce our overall liability costs. As I mentioned earlier, we should become materially better rated as we consummate the transaction. We will also look at an international rating.
Our ability to go to corporates for both current account and term deposits will be a much wider set after the transaction. There is enough and more opportunities on cross-border from a commercial banking perspective to also have a differentiated value add offering to our customers. I think all of that should, you know, consciously get reflected in the cost of liabilities, which is an important driver for driving profitability for us. The broad change that we are looking at in the future compared to past is work on cost of liabilities. We will be in a peculiar situation where, you know, very highly capitalized, well-rated bank with an opportunity to go to large corporates from a deposit standpoint and current account standpoint.
At the same time, we do have good profitable engines on the asset side, which is a very good combination to have. On the specific question on yields on the secured assets, we are consciously looking at within that we will look at you know relatively low risk businesses. We are you know if you look at our early indicators like bounce rates et cetera on affordable home loans and small LAP, this is like half of industry and that's conscious. The last thing we want is to build unnecessary risks in secured businesses. The idea is to get more efficient from an operating standpoint and look at cross sell where every customer has two or three products including liabilities and investments with us. So that's really the focus.
Sure, Jaideep . Second question on LDR, right? I can understand this INR 5,000 crore of transient deposit from ENBD. Even if I exclude that, you know, we have LDR in our favor. I mean, the LDR at 82% could have prompted you to go slow on, you know, some of the, maybe more than INR 3 crore term deposits. If I look at this quarter, I believe even adjusting for INR 5,000 crore, the growth in higher than INR 3 crore TD was much faster. We may not have the need, right? I mean, I was just trying to understand when LDR is in favor, why to grow TD at 12% QoQ. Is this back-ended?
Is this LCR driven and hence it may run off? Or how to look at that?
We've always mentioned broadly LDR.
Sure.
should be in the 82%-87%. I think these are period end numbers. You know, average LDR could probably be closer to 85%, which is reasonably within our comfort zone. By the way, that flow is not from ENBD. It was a
Okay. Some other investment.
It was a transaction that we got the escrow for a capital infusion of a company.
Okay.
You know, that it was nothing to do with ENBD in that sense. I think the optimization of the balance sheet, if I can, you know, use that phrase in a broader term, is an ongoing process. I think we are more focused right now on ensuring that we open up, you know, relationships on all fronts, deposits and loans. I don't think, you know, I don't think we are chasing deposit growth at any cost to kind of reflect some outside number or anything like that. It is just a natural consequence. Typically, March is a little heavy on deposits as well. In short, if you look at average LDRs, I think we should be closer to 85%.
Coming to your point on retail deposit, why do you chase? It is not a question of chasing, it is a question of building up the customer base in order to meet your LCR agreed to, number one. Number two, unless otherwise you have a relationship through one of the hook product, you will not be able to expand your relationship of 3-4 products with the customers. Naturally, it has to start either with one of the asset product or it has to start with something on the investment product. Most attractive investment product is not a SIP or anything like it is going to be an FD. Less than INR 3 crore, you know that it is that population which has an ability to borrow as well.
If I can onboard them as a customer, then I am having a bigger ability for expanding it in the other side of the balance sheet also. These are all the things which is driving us. Moreover, the branch footprint, if it is there, the footfall for the branch increases, where first with the FD, then with the savings fund, then with an asset. It goes that order. Or alternatively, the sales-driven asset team, they will get the asset, then they will get into the branch footfall.
TD less than INR 3 crore will continue to grow 24%-25%.
That's it.
Right. Sure, sir. Last question, sir, on credit card business. Is this right to understand that once I mean, you would be looking to grow that business or the business itself will grow once you see slippages normalization or, you know, we are at a point where, you know, business will definitely grow and, you know, credit cost or slippages will also come down. Just like JLG, where you have an SMA book, is there any numerical data point to give an early delinquency stuff on credit card also, sir? Thank you.
With regard to growth, I'll give a broad sense how we are approaching it, which I said that in my speech as well. As far as the unsecured is concerned, we will try to have it in the range of 20%-25%, which includes credit card, personal loan, and that of the PSL-necessitated JLG, right? All of them. That's the overall. If the balance sheet keeps growing, and naturally there is an opportunity for this particular group is also to grow because it has to maintain the 20%-22%. In our own internal calculation, it appears that it will continue to grow at 15% is what it will be able to catch up.
When the rest of the book is growing at 20%-25%, and this growing at 15% will be able to maintain that particular equilibrium and balance. With regard to that slippage and other thing I'll ask Jaideep.
Yeah, I think, you know, I would say that, you know, the slippages numbers are going to be elevated as I mentioned, and our judgment is that this should be largely an H1 phenomenon. From H2 onwards, as I mentioned, we should start seeing, you know, pretty much very normalized numbers. That is coming on the back of how we read the early delinquency. If you look at our early buckets, that is what is giving us the confidence. That is month-on-month improving over the last few months and consciously with steps that we have taken. There is a correlation of what we have done to the outcomes.
Therefore, let's say the visibility for this materially changing from H2.
Right. Sure, Jaideep. All the very best, sir. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kunal Shah from Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for taking the question. When we look at it again in terms of the question on growth versus margin, maybe there would have been some transient flows towards the end of the quarter. Eventually, if I look at ROAs still closer to 0.55 odd percent, okay, and we are growing at a much faster pace. Would the priority be more in terms of scaling up the ROA and having a more calibrated growth? We still see like 25%-30% growth coming in, but then ROAs remain modest. Okay. Cyclically credit costs can help to an extent, but otherwise, driven by NIM, fee, OpEx, should we see like ROAs continuing at a similar level?
No, Kunal, I think one is that the growth that we are doing on the loan book side, if I want to kind of take that, we are very conscious to look at ensuring that the mix of business is moving towards the lower risk products. There is an opportunity on wholesale. We are also positioning ourselves on the wholesale front, clearly with respect to you know the capital infusion and the rating upgrade that we will naturally assume post the transaction. It also means that the. I think I mentioned this earlier in the call.
The supply demand for us on the liability side gets heavily skewed in our favor for the first 12 to 18 months, where our need for deposits and borrowings will be significantly lower than what the opportunity to get those will be. Because we widen our opportunity set from wholesale and other areas. Therefore, cost of liabilities will come down due to these factors. That will be one driver for ROA. Second driver is that we will also have to optimize for an ROE number over a three year period. Which will be a combination of growth into ROA, right? I think we will start focusing.
Naturally, I think because of the tailwinds that we have on the businesses, we will have organic ROA as well as expansion of ROA due to capital coming through in the second half of the year. We see an opportunity to grow in the twenties with profitability, which is what the focus will be.
Sure. In terms of the ROA construct, if you can give between these three segments, wholesale, secured retail and unsecured, how does it stack up now? Maybe eventually, maybe 18, 24 months down the line, how should we see it? Maybe unsecured definitely moves up with the normalization of the credit cost. Today, in terms of wholesale and secured, is it like too ROA dilutive?
No, wholesale is, Kunal, highly profitable also, driven by the liability franchise that is there in that book. You know, I think while if we look at only assets for ROA in wholesale, that obviously will be more in the 1% or thereabout range. But if we look at fee income, treasury, current account, businesses, ability to get salary accounts for us through wholesale, I think we have to look at it in a holistic picture and then that becomes highly profitable. It is in the 2%+ zip code. I'm using PBT and I'm using the denominator as wholesale loan book. Naturally, the moment you look at a bank loan book, you have to add 30%-35% of, you know, G-Secs and other investments.
Just be careful on the math when you look at extrapolating that for the bank. On the secured retail, we just mentioned that it's been on the investment phase for the last couple of years. Last quarter, I think H2 of fiscal 2026 was already breaking even for secured retail. We should move towards a you know somewhere in the 70-90 basis points PBT ROA for that business, as we move towards the current financial year. Every business will move towards a better profitability for different reasons. Secured retail is more a question of scale and productivity optimization. Unsecured is a question of optimizing the outcomes on the provisioning.
Provisioning.
Some optimization on the costs.
Costs.
Wholesale, I think, is already operating on, I would say more than optimal ROA profitability because we've obviously seen zero credit costs for the last 3-4 years.
Sure. One last thing in terms of, again, the yield construct. 50 odd basis points, even when we look at some kind of a mix change, however lower yield, we would have done it or maybe no yield, but, that's too coming towards the end of the quarter. Maybe repo again, when we look at it for us, the EBLR linked portfolio would be relatively lower compared to anyone else. Is it like a larger part is a liquidity component within it not? Maybe this 50 basis points appears to be much higher, okay, looking at putting everything together.
Partly mix change, partly cards reversal of interest due to slippages and partly due to liquidity. I would say these, you know, relatively important factors.
Okay. Now it should settle at this levels or it will further go down as we are focusing more on the lower risk portfolios, offset by the cost of liabilities benefit which we'll get in.
I would say margins should flatten out and therefore we might have some more reduction in yield on advances largely compensated by cost of deposits.
Got it. Perfect. Yeah. Thanks and all the best. Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Shubhranshu Mishra from Phillip Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi. In the PPT, I don't think there's a source split for the credit card sourcing. How much is it from our in-house customers, CASA customers or liability customers? How much is it from the co-brands, and how much is it from open market? Second, what's the total amount of write-offs that we have taken from the credit card pool in FY 2026 and how much in Q4 2024? What kind of write-offs or settlements are we going to look forward to in 2027? With this new capital coming in, are we looking at a change in the management as well at the CXO level, MD level? Happy to take these questions. Thanks.
Yeah. First, with the new capital, only change what you'll be seeing is the board composition, nothing else.
Okay. As far as the card composition is concerned, are you going to?
Yeah.
Vikram.
I'll take the question on write-off, and then I'll give it to Vikram on the mix of origination. We took about INR 590 crore write-off in Q4 on cards, which is nothing but a mathematical consequence of slippages and non-upgrades within 120 days. It's a technical write-off. We obviously continue to collect from these customers. For the year, it was approximately INR 2,100 crore. Vikram on sourcing.
On the sourcing front for... You have seen the new origination numbers of last 3-4 months. Out of this total sourcing, 90% of it is sourced by our own direct sales teams in the market. About 10% of what we source on our own comes from our branch network. Our co-brands contribute about 10% of the total.
The 80% is-
80% is direct sales, 10% is co-brands, and 10% is balance, right?
Yeah. Ballpark, that is right.
Right. Just one follow-up question to Jaideep. This INR 2,100 crores of write-off that we just spoke of and INR 590 crores of technical write-off that we are speaking of, ballpark, the recovery is, say, 30 cents to a dollar, right? Or 25 cents to a dollar?
No, it should be a little lower. Closer to maybe $0.15-$1.
$0.15-$1. That too over a period of 2-3 years, not immediately in 2027?
Yeah. Bulk of it comes in the first 12 to 18 months.
Okay. $0.10 in 2027, another $0.05 back end in 2028.
Yeah. That is a good estimate. Yeah.
Right. Thanks. This was very helpful.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Piran Engineer from CLSA. Please go
Yeah. Hi, team. Congratulations on the quarter. Most of my questions have been answered, but just to clarify one thing. Jaideep, you mentioned that NIMs will be stable in 1Q and then improve 2Q onwards.
That's right.
Excuse me. What will drive the improvement from 2Q if the TD repricing is over? Is it just the fact that your rating upgrade will lead to lower wholesale deposit rates? Is that the reason?
Piran, one mathematical outcome is the sheer amount of capital we will have, right? That itself will be one. I don't think there is a material change in spread. There'll be some improvement in spread as our credit card slippages come down, and therefore standard assets credit card book plus MFI book should become slightly higher percentage than where we are today.
Okay, spreads will be the same, but the math impact is there of the equity capital. Yeah. Secondly, on wholesale deposits, can you just give us a sense of how the rates have moved, say, since the time the Emirates deal was announced? And then even after the Gulf War, I'm assuming it would have gone back up. Can you just give us some sense of where to where have they gone in the last, you know, four, five months or six months since you announced?
Broadly, I think, the transaction has allowed a clear reflection on the pricing on the CD front. And to some extent, the borrowings that we have from interbank borrowing, foreign currency borrowing, et cetera. On the TD front, I think it's been more a reflection of liquidity conditions that we've seen. March was tight, so it went up. Nothing different materially yet from just because of the transaction. I think that we will expect to see once we have a rating upgrade, which obviously will come through, ideally immediately post the transaction.
We will also look to get an international rating, so that we are able to very confidently attract the MNC business in India, because that will also be an important segment to open up post the transaction.
Samrat, I think that's on the wholesale side.
You're saying.
I mean, just to add to Jaideep's point, I think there is, you know, increased acceptability of the name within the corporate world as well. There is increased traction, and we've added many new NTB clients on wholesale side, from a liability perspective. It is helping.
This will further sort of.
Yeah, go ahead.
Sorry. I'm thinking, is that also coming at a lower cost? You're getting a wider range of corporates. That's good to know. Is the deposit also coming at lower cost yet, or that will only be in the future?
As Jaideep has said clearly, we have not seen the impact of the transaction on the rate so far. In the future, when the bank's rating goes up from AA to AAA-, expecting that to be impacted.
I think there are two things that will happen, Piran. One is that, as Mr. Kumar said, we'll have a material rating upgrade. Second, I think we will have a peculiar situation where need for deposits versus supply will be skewed in our favor. That will, part of it that hopefully structural part of that will be cyclical for the next nine months.
Understood. Lastly, just a bookkeeping question. What is your mix of savings accounts deposits ticket-wise? Like, how much below INR 5 lakhs, how much, say, INR 5-INR 25 lakhs, et cetera?
Piran, I'm not carrying that data. I will share with you.
Below INR 5 lakhs and above INR 5 lakhs, any broad range if you can share?
I think below INR 5 lakhs should be a high single-digit percentage. 10% or so.
Of SAR or of total?
Of savings to savings. I thought that was your question.
Okay. Yeah, yeah. That was my question. 90% of your SA deposits are more than INR 5 lakh ticket size.
Just one second, please.
Yeah.
Sorry, I'm being corrected. 33% is below INR 5 lakhs.
Okay. Got it. Yeah. That's it from my end. Thank you and I wish you all the best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Param Subramanian from Investec. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my question. I just again coming back to the point on NII, right? Our NII is largely flattish quarter-on-quarter, versus, you know, about a 15% balance sheet expansion, sequentially. I'm just trying to understand, and I can see on the liabilities, you know, it is sharply led by, wholesale and treasury, which are showing in slide 10. Is it that we've raised a lot of short-term liabilities, which as soon as the equity comes in, we will pay this off and, you know, basically we're levering up the book as quickly as possible? Is broadly this how we are going to, you know, operate from here on until the capital raise?
Param, some amount of optimization is being attempted where we are looking to see how we can, you know, optimize the balance sheet post capital infusion because the best bang for the buck will be to retire liabilities rather than invest in short-term securities. To some extent, we are doing that. To the extent it does not conflict with LCR and other gaps that we have to run on our liability book. But otherwise the reduction in cost of funds or cost of deposits is more a function of the environment rates and the cut in SAR that we have taken.
Okay. Jaideep, if you could, this wholesale and treasury, this INR 57,000 crore that you're showing, what is the broad tenure of that? These are all callable, right?
We will have some amount which is non-callable.
Non-callable also.
We'll have non-callable.
50% is non-callable.
Average tenure should be in the six month zone. 6-8 months. Retail would be 1.5 years or so or +1 year .
Yeah, yeah.
Wholesale would be in the six-month zone.
50% non-callable. CD book.
Okay.
It includes the CD book, which should, yeah, 3-6 months. Yeah.
Okay. If I heard you correctly, you said the CD market is already reflecting the, say, benefits of, you know, the new parent. Did you say that just now?
The amount of counterparties that are buying our CDs have gone up significantly, so it's definitely helping us.
Okay. Okay.
Ultimately, we will, you know, the counterparties will also expect the final rating outcome for them to kind of, you know, ultimately reflect it fully. That's a matter of, you know, whatever, few weeks or months or whatever. Yeah.
Okay. What is the broad benefit you've seen in the CD, say, rates versus before?
Not much of it. We are not a very big player in the CD market.
Okay.
Whatever is required to be raised for it, we are able to raise it then and now also. Future will decide about after the transaction is put through.
Currently, it's more counterparties, number of counterparties that could buy it.
Yeah. Fair enough. If you could talk about what is the broad, say, yield on your wholesale book versus your retail book. In your retail, you've given segment-wise, but say, broad yield differential between wholesale and retail, because clearly wholesale is becoming a, you know, segment of focus.
Approximately 8% yield on wholesale, but that will include a component of foreign currency. If I strip out that, it should be closer to 8.5%.
Around 8.3%.
8.3% on wholesale versus how much on retail blended?
On the rupees. Blended including cards and MFI?
Yeah, yeah. If you could separate that out, that would also be interesting.
That's about 14.9% blended retail.
Including cards and MFI.
That's right. For the quarter four.
Okay. Fair enough. In the retail, I can see that, you know, there is this other component that has gone up sharply this quarter. What exactly is that?
So there was a-
It seems to be one of the growth areas. Yeah.
Priority Sector related IBPC that we did inversion of the agri portfolio, that was approximately INR 2,500 crores.
Okay. 2,500 of IBPC.
Yeah.
Okay. Lastly, Jaideep , there are a few, say, openings within the bank, where we have, say, interim positions, the CFOs, CRO, and, you know, if you could talk about, say, what are the open positions, what are the hirings that are pending and that we could look forward to in terms of, say, management additions incrementally? Yeah.
We have been doing the re-churning right from March 2025 itself, and it is almost every position has been filled up. Here also, the interim CEO, because of that transition point, we have already shortlisted the candidates. We are waiting for the people to join. If you ask me that we don't have a vacancy in majority of the CXO positions excepting for the CFO, who will be joining us shortly.
Okay. CFO. There is an interim CRO as well, right? Okay. Those are all positions that
The previous CRO is continuing. The CRO who was there in the role is continuing. When he superannuates, there will be a change.
Okay. Fair enough, sir. Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you so much.
Thanks.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jayant Kharote from Axis Capital. Please go ahead.
Sir, just one question on the new branches that are opening in Kerala. How is the traction? What are the early signs and any number that you could guide your target for deposit mobilization there?
I'll tell you, the first day deposit what normally we get is quite encouraging. Since we have opened all the branches, the liabilities as well as assets, we saw some quite good traction in respect to the gold loan and some of the secured products like housing loan and LAP loan. We saw it on day one in maybe around 6-7 branches out of 13 branches which we opened. Liability franchise is, yes, definitely it's picking up because of the corridor which is just known to them, and it is too early to comment about how it is done so far. Our belief and the prediction is that it'll definitely scale much faster than what we have seen it in other geographies.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Saurabh Patwa from Quest Investment Managers. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. Hope I'm audible.
Uh, sir, may we request you to kindly use your handset, please.
I hope this is better now.
Yes, sir. Please continue. Thank you.
Yeah. So sir, so I think you just highlighted in the previous question also that a lot of senior management positions have already been filled in last quarter. Given the kind of business profile change, will you be also planning to change several regional level and several business level or middle management level changes? And how is the process for that ongoing? Because your risk profile is reducing materially. Your asset, the kind of asset which you would be wanting to build will require maybe require a different set of teams. Just wanted your thoughts on that, sir.
If you just look at it, our asset building itself has started two years before. When we wanted to, we have invested heavily during that period itself, the new asset managers with a clear view of scaling the business to the extent what you have been, what we intend to. You have been seeing it last four, five, six quarters. Continuously they grow around 30%-35% as far as asset is concerned. In respect to the other middle management role, it is a question of only routine business as usual. Wherever we feel that when an expansion takes place, there will be a new induction. With respect to the managers, we call it as a direct manager recruitment through our Manipal University training institute, which we continue to do as a routine manner.
Now, as we expand the branches, there will always be a induction of the managers and seniors, as well as after that, two levels up, because the geography expansion needs some new faces also, right?
Right.
Our first preference is that identify the people with the capabilities and caliber within the organization, which we have been supporting it. We saw them as one who understand the, who gel well with the culture of the bank as well as, who understand the bank fairly well, and their productivity is normally used to be good. Wherever those opportunities are available, they are being considered as well.
Okay. The second question was in terms of in the beginning of one of the questions you called, you highlighted about the cross-border opportunity with which we're getting the funding from ENBD and they being our promoters, how large this opportunity can be and have you already started to build some capabilities there as well?
We have a fairly strong technology capability which is handling our cross-border transactions even today. It is a question of extending the pipe to that of some more maybe a single hop or double hop opportunities available. We are exploring all those things. These things we'll be able to do it once our transaction is put through. There is opportunities available. This opportunity is pretty high. You know that $135 billion monthly remittance is coming from that particular corridor, and out of which 23%-25% is coming from this particular bank. That is an opportunity on which we are looking at.
Right. Do you also need to create some branch network related to that in India or our current capabilities are reasonably strong to at least for to begin with?
Already identified and told earlier also that we are in the process of identifying the growth opportunity locations. We have already identified 200 locations for growth this year. If not 200, maybe around 150-200 branches we'll be able to open this year. Last year, we opened around 52, out of which 23 was opened in the last quarter itself. The next quarter we intend to open similar numbers.
Similar numbers and we'll continue to maintain that trend for next four, five, six quarters as well.
Great, sir. Great. Thanks a lot, sir. Thanks for the detailed answer, sir, and all the best for the coming quarters and years.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Pritesh from DAM Capital Advisors. Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening, and congrats on a great quarter. Just two, three questions. One is on the LCR. What will be the average this quarter?
130% percent.
130%.
130%. From April 1, there was change in the LCR regulations. Any benefit or any decline on LCR we can see?
Like to like, we should have a 2%-3% benefit.
Okay, 2%-3%. Okay, fair. The second question was on the Prime LAP interest rate. Though the sourcing yield is quite steady, the interest rate is gone down sharply after many quarters, I think. So anything to read into that?
So-
Yeah.
Hi. This is Kumar Ashish here. I manage the retail assets. If you see on the Prime LAP, the sourcing yield, we've been able to sustain quarter-on-quarter. The portfolio yield, however, is actually, you know, sort of, being adjusted given the repo rate that has been dropping since February 2025. Since now we have seen about 125 basis points drop from 6.5 to now 5.25. We've been at least able to sustain our portfolio yield, you know, within 80-90 basis points drop. But at least from a sourcing point of view, we are trying to make sure that we do a calibrated disbursement both for risk as well as pricing, and therefore we don't see even going forward this to be, you know, moderating.
It's more function of, repo rate or the repricing happening, from a rate cut point of view?
On the existing portfolio.
Right.
That's how it will happen, yeah.
Lastly, on the MFI ticket size on disbursement, it has been moving up. Now it's almost 32% up year-on-year. Also, you know, the portfolio outstanding also is going up. How do you see from here on? You know, because it seems to be that the ticket size is one of the highest in the industry right now for us.
Although it is not highest, it's nothing but natural that this ticket size is bound to go up because of the restrictions on number of lenders as per the MFIN guardrails and amount is also capped. When the combinations of the number-lender restrictions and amount restrictions, naturally only three or four has to give it. Instead of having five, six people who are distributing it is bound to go up. In our view that it is more or less reaching that point where it may not drastically move up, it may marginally move up a little bit.
Just to add.
Got it.
As you're aware, MFIN specifically guides the number of loans that any borrower can take. For across the industry, the number of sort of outstanding loans, even the old ones with more than three has dropped to less than 6%. I'm giving you the industry numbers too. Therefore, it's like the MD said, it's a natural thing that people are actually looking at, you know, higher ticket sizes from the MFIs that or the banks that they have business with. The other thing in context for us is that we've also been focusing more on renewal of our existing good borrowers. In fact, that also ensures that, you know, our ticket sizes go up in the second cycle and the third cycle, so on, so forth.
But assuming-
I would say we are still nowhere close to highest in the industry.
We are not at all. Yeah, not at all.
Right. I was just trying to get a sense that assuming that the guardrails are still there for many more quarters to come, do we see the ticket size still moving up, or we will see that there is opportunity to add new customers as the asset quality at least now has improved across the industry?
I would think that, you know, we'll have to keep in context of the overall loan cap also to a MFI borrower, which is, you know, capped in any case at INR 2 lakh.
INR 2 lakhs.
Therefore, you know, I don't think we are going to see a significant spike from there on.
Possibly.
Assuming that, you know, people on average will have loans with, let's say, one or two.
Two.
Right. Therefore this sort of perhaps can move by another 5%-10%. That's the range I would see.
Sure. Lastly, from this crisis which has happened and for our lending businesses, any early assessment or anything we have noticed or are going to see, or is it like on our, you know, on a platter to just see what can be the impact?
No. I think Mr. Kumar mentioned that in his opening remarks. So far we've not seen any impact at all, both on the wholesale and retail portfolio. We monitor this very, very closely in terms of any cash flow issues on borrowers on wholesale, any bounce rate going up on retail. So far we haven't seen anything. Having said that, it is still early days because the real impact might come over some time. Though, I guess again, the other important thing is we've been fairly risk-averse on wholesale for now, pretty much over the last five years.
Correct.
Similarly on the retail front, post-September 2021, we've had a very different underwriting standards. As a result of which we've seen hardly any slippages or hardly any credit costs coming through on the secured retail front. Given the nature of that underwriting, I would be surprised if there is any material impact, but we'll have to see how this goes because it depends on many factors.
Got it. Thank you so much and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. This will be the last question for today, which is from the line of Praveen Agarwal, an individual investor. Please go ahead. Yes, Mr. Agarwal, please go ahead. I'm sorry, sir, you're not audible. As there is no response, we now conclude the Q&A session. If you have any further questions, please contact RBL Bank Limited via email at ir@rblbank.com. I repeat, ir@rblbank.com. Thank you, members of the management. On behalf of RBL Bank Limited, we thank you for joining us and you may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Thanks.
Thank you.