Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to South Indian Bank Q1 FY 2027 Earnings Conference Call. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements about the company, which are based on the beliefs, opinions, and expectations of the company as on date of this call. These statements are not the guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. 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 touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to [Aman] from ICICI Securities. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Renju. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining the call. On behalf of ICICI Securities, we welcome you all to Q1 FY 2027 post-earnings conference call of South Indian Bank. From management side, we have with us P. R. Seshadri, Managing Director and CEO, Dolphy Jose, Executive Director, Anto George, EVP and Chief Operating Officer, Vinod Francis, SGM and Chief Financial Officer, and Jimmy Mathew, SGM and Company Secretary, along with other senior executives of the bank. I will now hand over the conference to management for their opening remarks, post which we can start with the Q&A session. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you very much, Aman. Good evening to everybody on the call. Thank you very much for joining us for The South Indian Bank Limited Q1 FY 2027 earnings call. My colleagues, as Aman had mentioned, are with me in the room, and we look forward to our conversation today. Let me preface the conversation that we are going to have subsequently with some of the key highlights from our financial performance for the quarter. The bank declared net profit of INR 378 crores for quarter one FY 2026/2027, registering a growth of 17% compared to INR 322 crores in Q1 FY 2025/2026. Total deposits grew by 11% to INR 125,817 crores from INR 112,922 crores on a YoY basis. Retail deposits, which excludes bulk deposits, grew by 14%.
That is to say that whilst total deposits grew by 11%, retail deposits grew by 14% to INR 124,306 crores from INR 109,368 crores. Gross advances grew by 17% to INR 104,368 crores from INR 89,198 crores. During the last financial year, we had a technical write-off of INR 1,163 crores, and if we were to exclude the impact of this, then the YoY growth is actually 18%. Total business of the bank grew by 14% to INR 230,185 crores. Net interest margin for the quarter was 3.23%. With this, we have clawed back the dip in net interest margin that occurred as a consequence of the repo rate cuts. The net interest margin for the quarter was up sequentially 28 basis points, and on a YoY basis, the NIM was up 20 basis points.
The bank was able to show a healthy growth in average advances during the period with a growth of 17%. Return on assets at 105 basis points and return on equity at 12.84%. Bank declared the highest-ever net interest income in the quarter at INR 1,025 crores, which is a growth of 23% compared to INR 832 crores registered during Q1 FY 2025/2026. It also represents a sequential growth of INR 110 crores between Q4 and Q1. Capital adequacy ratio for the Bank was at 19.62%, and the Tier- 1 ratio stands at 18.93% as on June 30th, 2026. CASA grew by 15% year-on-year to INR 41,496 crores versus the earlier year period amount of INR 36,204 crores. Provision Coverage Ratio, including write-off, improved by 569 basis points to reach 54.91%, and PCR excluding write-off improved to 81.40% during the year.
Overall, gross NPA reduced by 177 basis points from 3.15% to 1.38% on a YoY basis. Net NPA reduced by 42 basis points from 68 basis points to 26 basis points, again, on a YoY basis. Slippage ratio for the quarter was at 12 basis points, which when annualized comes to 48 basis points. The credit cost for the Bank for this quarter was 9 basis points. I'd like to now take you through some other operational and financial performance indicators of the Bank. Our focus on MSME loans continues. On a YoY basis, our business loans improved from INR 14,391 crores. Sorry, we improved to INR 14,391 crores from INR 12,660 crores. This number includes a INR 554 crores charge-off. If you were to exclude the impact of this, that amounts to a growth of 18% on a YoY basis.
The Gold loan business grew by 43% and now stands at INR 24,930 crores, with an average LTV of 65.25% and an average ticket size of INR 2.94 lakhs. Mortgage loans, home loans, and auto loans are other areas of focus. On a YoY basis, we were able to achieve 34% growth in mortgage loans, 19% growth in home loans, and 34% growth in auto loans. These numbers exclude the impact of IBPCs or BA or other bulk transactions that we may have entered into. We will continue to maintain the momentum in disbursements and collections in the coming quarters, and we aim to achieve the desired targets that we've set out for ourselves. As many of you know, this is the last conference call that I will be attending in my current capacity as the Managing Director and CEO of South Indian Bank.
Before I conclude and open the floor for questions, I'd like to thank all the folks on this call for working together with us as we built the franchise for South Indian Bank over the last two years and nine months. During this period, we've made very significant progress, in terms of new products, changes to existing products, new systems so that we are able to do business better with our counterparties, significant improvements to our processes, changes to our organizational structure, significant enhancement in our capabilities that enable us to compete better. All of this was possible because, A, I was given this opportunity to be part of this organization, for which I thank the board and the others who are responsible for it.
I'd also like to thank all my colleagues within South Indian Bank who have afforded me the trust and collaborated with me in making possible whatever progress that we've had over the last two years and nine months. I'd also like to thank all of you on this call for your forbearance, for your advice, for your help in transitioning South Indian Bank from where it was to where it is today. With that, I'd like to open the floor for questions. Thank you very much once again.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question comes from the line of Akshat Agrawal with Nirmal Bang Institutional Equities. Please go ahead.
Good evening, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. Sir, if you can provide some color on what drove such a sharp decline in cost of deposits. Have we absorbed all residual deposit repricing or is some left? How much contribution was from the very strong growth in CASA during this quarter? Sir, similarly on the asset side, what drove the better yield on advances? Was it shift towards the better-yielding retail as MSME and Mid-Corp? Or was there something else? Overall, sir, what's the outlook for the margin going forward? That was my first question, sir. Thank you.
Thank you, Akshat. I think basically we've been working on our cost deposits a while a substantial chunk of our liability base. Sorry, we are getting some kind of background noise from somewhere.
Yeah, it's been managed. Please go ahead.
Okay. As you are all aware, the interest rate cycle changed when RBI started cutting repo rates. At which point in time we started marking down our deposit rates as well. During the period from the first quarter and the second quarter of this year, so I'm saying from January of this year to June of this year, a very substantial portion of our high-rate deposits actually rolled off and repriced downwards by anywhere between 40-60 basis points. That in large measure is what is reflected in the significant reduction in our cost of funding. There's also a very significant impact that is coming from the increased CASA balances that we have. The good news is that our average CASA balances grew 19%. They went from 100%-119%. That in turn has helped manage our cost of funding.
The final element that helped us manage our costs was the fact that the bulk deposits rolled off. We basically dropped bulk deposits by 50% from where they were a year ago. If you're over-funded, then you end up paying X on the deposit and then receiving Y when you place the money overnight with Reserve Bank of India. The arbitrage losses that we were suffering was reduced very considerably. There was a lot of active management on the funding side that enabled us to do all of this. The principal reason is the fact that the higher-cost deposits rolled off. Now, your question was, will it continue going forward? I suspect that a substantial portion of the repricing impact is already baked in. Going forward, this kind of sharp reduction is quite unlikely.
The second part of your question was how did we get the 5 basis points increase in our asset yields. That was largely driven by a shift in mix, and we were also helped by the fact that a portion of our corporate book is linked to T-bills, and T-bills moved up very sharply during this period. There was a mixture of various things that happened. Change in mix, us being on the right side of the rate cycle movement, all of that helped to get the yield on assets up. I hope this answers your question. There is NIM, you want a guidance? Right?
Yeah.
Okay. With respect to NIM guidance, what I would like to say is that when the rates were going down, we were perhaps the most impacted bank because we give effect to a repo rate change on a T +1 basis. If rates go down, we are the most impacted. The logic for us to adopt that was, A, it's in line with RBI's policy of rate transmission and so on and so forth. Equally importantly, if you are the first one to be impacted, you're also likely to be the first one to take action to counter the impact of the change. Now we are in a position where our belief is the rate cycle has switched, so it's more likely to increase than to reduce.
If that belief is right, our view is that the NIMs from here should harden as the repo rate changes come into effect. While I cannot give a guidance on the number, all I can say is that we are reasonably well-positioned with respect to NIM, and we do expect that the outcomes for us during the year will be positive.
Thanks for the detailed answer. My second question is on OpEx. The bank has resumed employee hiring and branch expansion this quarter. Do you expect further hiring and branch addition for rest of the year? How should we think about the cost going forward?
It's a very good question. We are in a very small way restarting branch rollout. Essentially because we had frozen almost everything for the last three years. In fact, we had reduced our branch count by a little bit, and we are now coming back to where we were. The branch rollout this time is going to be in very key locations for us. We think that we are going to make better choices in terms of where to put the branches and our whole process of managing the branch rollout in such a fashion that we get outcomes that we want, which is revenues to come reasonably quickly after the expenses crystallize, is something that we are working on. The idea is to be very careful as to where we put the branches and how we get them to actually be accretive to ourselves.
At this point in time, there is no significant change in our process. We think that we should be able to manage our costs quite tightly going forward. As a institution, we are aiming to get positive operating leverage. The last two years we've demonstrated positive operating leverage. This quarter we don't have it. For the full year, our aim is to get full positive operating leverage. I think the traction that we have on NIMs, the traction that we have on business lines in general, gives us some confidence that whilst the cost will increase a little bit, our total revenues will increase more, and consequently pre-provisioning operating profit should actually increase. I'm going to request our CFO, Vinod Francis, to give you further details if you so desire.
I concur to the points what MD Seshadri has mentioned. My end, we are not expecting that any significant increase in the OpEx that to come in the current year to materially alter the P&L structure. We should be within the range of, say, maybe 5%-6% in that range.
My last question is on fee, sir. It has been a little bit soft declining QoQ and even other income, which includes the bancassurance and recoveries were on a lower side. What would be the outlook for the rest of the year? Can we expect fee recovery this year? Or is it more of a FY 2030 agenda? Within others, how did bancassurance versus the recovery, sir?
What is the last question? Versus recovery? I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you.
Yeah. There's an other part of the non-interest income where we put banc assurance as well as the recovery income. I wanted to understand how both are trending, as in, is banc assurance income increasing and recoveries coming down? Is something like that happening over there?
To answer your question, firstly, we think that this is a one-off. We were very busy working on our NIMs and we were not laser-focused on fees. We will renew our focus on this element and we do not see this as a trend. I think we should be able to address this going forward. We are also working on a series of new systems which will enable us to participate in other products more effectively. Our trade and FX platform, we are hoping will go live by end of September with all capabilities. It'll enable our customers to do everything electronically with us. FX bookings, LCs, guarantees, the ability to send money overseas, receive money from overseas, everything being done electronically, settling the export bills, import bills, all of that.
Currently, on the FX side, we have limited revenues, but you can see from our presentation that our revenues, whilst they're limited, have been growing at 40%-50% year-on-year. With these new systems coming in place, business volumes will grow and revenues will also grow. With respect to fees, my own view is that it's a one-timer. We shouldn't read this as something that is going to last forever. It is something that we can work out of. It is perhaps because we were focused on other elements and we did not focus on this as much as we should have. The first quarter of any financial year is traditionally a softer quarter when it comes to recoveries. Our recoveries for the quarter was approximately INR 170 crores. INR 179 crores in reality. Our slippages were INR 120- odd crores, INR 128 crores.
The difference between slippage and recoveries was lower than normal and a small proportion of that comes in as revenue into the revenue line, which should have been significantly lower than the numbers that we've had historically. To give you the exact number, I'll request Vinod Francis to walk you through the numbers.
With regard to the recovery side, if you see, we had the recovery from technical accounts to INR 60 crores and that remains with the last quarter, that is March quarter. On the other side, the contribution of the recovery towards the interest income is slightly lower and because of the total recoveries are slightly lower when compared with the March quarter because this quarter we had a total recovery of INR 179 crores.
Right, sir. Sir, thanks a lot for answering my questions. I will rejoin the queue. All the best.
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Prashant Kumar with Sunidhi Securities & Finance. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. First of all, congratulations, sir, on a remarkable tenure of South Indian Bank and under your leadership, the bank has delivered a significant turnaround and we wish you all the very best for your future endeavors. My first question is on corporate credit. I am in asset side, corporate credit has grown at a healthy pace over past few quarters. With the corporate portfolio now accounting for around 40% of total loan book, our strategic objective was to reducing around 30%. Has the bank consciously recalibrated its portfolio mix or do you still intend to gradually bring down the book to around 30% over the medium term?
I think it's a very good question. Our aim in the long run is to bring corporate down. Under the current circumstances, given the disturbances in West Asia and so on and so forth, our belief is that high-quality corporates offer lower risk than some of the other segments we operate in. The other thing that had happened was pricing on corporates had improved very dramatically during the last quarter, especially for the shorter duration facilities. We took advantage of that because we already had credit lines on many large corporates. Given the fact that we had liquidity, we chose to deploy it with the corporates because the view was that in an environment which is uncertain, deploying money, which is marginally accretive with low-risk counterparties, was better than trying to grow high-risk assets. That's why corporate grew last quarter.
The environment hasn't changed very dramatically. The uncertainty associated with the Persian Gulf continues. Our view now is that we will continue to look for opportunities on the corporate side. As long as they are remunerative, we will engage with them. Long run, those balances will be wound down. Please remember that these are all very short-duration assets, and we have the ability to wind them down practically at will. I mean, it's not really at will, but they are short duration, so they roll off very quickly. Therefore, this is a one-time adjustment which has occurred on account of environmental conditions, and also given the strengths that we have on the corporate side. I mean, if we did not have lines on these same counterparties, we would not have been able to grow this.
Given the fact that we had them and we had the liquidity, and we were a little wary about credit risk that is likely to hit us in the future, we took this opportunity. I trust I answered your question.
Thank you. Mr. Kumar, please rejoin the queue for more questions. Next question comes on the line of Suraj Das with Sundaram Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. I have three questions. Before that, sir, one clarification.
Mr. Das, sorry for interrupting. We cannot hear you. Can you speak a little louder?
Is it better now?
No. Can you speak a little more louder?
Okay. Is it better now?
Yes. Please go ahead. Thank you.
Okay. Sure. I was saying thanks, sir for the opportunity. I have three questions, but before that one clarification. On this fee income that you are mentioning, there was some one-off, but if I look at your core fee income line item, which is INR 179 crore this quarter. If I look at this trend in terms of, let us say, RoA contribution. The contribution seems to be coming down only, let us say, from 60 basis point to now 50 basis point for last two, three quarter consistently. If you can highlight what are the factors behind this weakness? I mean, is it that the new product that you are doing, you are more focused on, let us say, margin or yield rather than the fee component. The new products that you are doing are of lesser fee component. Is that the plan?
That is question one. Question two, sir. In terms of employee cost, I think there were some one-off in the last quarter, in terms of actuarial thing of INR 80 crore. It looks like that this quarter this has reversed fully while the G-Sec movement has been half of only the movement in Q4. Can you clarify that thing? The last two questions are, one on the credit cost. Right now, I think on a run rate basis, you are 30, 35 basis points. After ECL, do you think this could be the run rate or it can go up? Because eventually there is a higher requirement on the SMA 1+ 2. Sir, the last question is on FCNR deposit growth. This quarter it has been good, I think 6% QoQ growth.
Question is, sir, do you still think this kind of growth post June as well? Because I think there are a lot of noises in terms of this leveraging talks within RBI and way central banks so and so forth. Are you seeing that the growth remains good or it has come down or if you can give some color. Also what is the landed cost of these deposits?
Those are a lot of questions. Let me answer the first one first, your question on fees. Fee, basically multiple lines. One line which is Treasury and Forex has been very muted for us as you can see. It was very good in Q1 FY 2026, but now it is Q4 FY 2026, it was actually zero. Now we've recovered a little bit. We have INR 44 crores, but it is 80% below what it was in Q1. With respect to the core fee income, you're right in the sense that it has come off a little bit from INR 191 crores in Q4 down to INR 179 crores, and it's a little lower than Q1 of FY 2026, which is INR 188 crores. There are some technical reasons for it.
We seem to have changed some product setup on our system where when an account is renewed, the way we renew it and the way we charge the fee by way of an oversight or by way of a change in the process, it unfortunately resulted in lower fees being charged on a particular product. That difference between INR 191 crores and INR 179 crores can in large part be sort of attributed to that, which we will now fix going forward, and we should be able to change the mix. The other area where we have a reduction is in terms of recoveries, a portion of which gets attributed to interest income because of the nature of the loan and where it is and the quantum of recoveries that we get.
As I told you, Q1 is lower than Q4 of last year, and it tends to improve as time goes along. Therefore my view is that this lower non-interest income line is an aberration which will get fixed as we move forward. We are aware of it, we are addressing it, and our belief is that this is something that we will be able to fix as we go forward. Our credit cost guidance. From a credit cost perspective, our cost was 9 basis points for the quarter. Slippage was 12 basis points for the quarter. Slippage was INR 128 crores. We think that our slippage will be in the neighborhood of INR 500 crores- INR 750 crores, INR 800 crores will be the slippage given the current trend lines that we can see, even assuming that there is some deterioration on account of the West Asia problem.
Our recoveries will be in the neighborhood of INR 800 crores-INR 1,000 crores. That's the current view that we have. Obviously, we'll try and restrict the slippage to the maximum possible. The exact credit cost that translates into our P&L is a function of many things that go into it. We think that the nine basis points that we currently have is probably on a generous side. Hopefully, as we go forward, our credit costs will moderate from here, if anything. I'll turn this over to our CFO for a more detailed answer.
Thank you, sir. With regard to the other income, just to touch upon one more thing in addition to what MD was mentioning. As you know, there is a limit of one-off items if you compare with the last year-
Sorry for interrupting, speaker. Speaker, can you speak a little louder? Cannot hear you.
Am I audible now? Am I audible now?
Yes. Please go ahead. Thank you.
Okay. Just to add a few points on the other income side, apart from what MD was mentioning. It is with regard to the, if you compare with the figures of Q1 of the last year, there are certain one-off items you can see over there. That is one which we had already mentioned with regard to the treasury. Last year, Q1, we had a spectacular income from the treasury. Apart from that, there was the income what we earned from sale of PSLC was there. That was amongst close to around INR 60 crores. Current year, we were not having that kind of surplus to have that sale. That is also one of the items which is not there as a one-off income in the current quarter. Coming to the recovery side.
From the recovery from the technical wrote-off accounts, we are almost flat compared to the last quarter. It's almost INR 57 crores current quarter and last quarter it was INR 60 crores. It remains almost flat even though total recoveries have reduced from Q4 to Q1. In Q1, the total recovery is at INR 179 crores. Going forward, historically, if you see the recovery pattern, the Q1 seems to be a little bit slower and thereafter more and more recoveries to come in the coming quarters. Hopefully we should be able to close to around INR 1,000 crores for the year.
Okay. Sir, on the actuarial thing on the OpEx?
The actuarial valuation as we mentioned last quarter, we had a write-back of around INR 80 crores. This quarter, as you know that at the year beginning, we take the actuarial valuation as a prediction for the current year and based on that we started providing as normal. Last year also, first quarter if you see, we had a total actuarial contribution of around INR 80 crores and this year also we had made a contribution of INR 84 crores. It is back to the normal.
Okay, sure. The last one, the FCNR, I think is the growth good even after June?
The growth has been robust and we are participating actively on the FCNR scheme. Internally, our view is that as long as the price matches the price of liquidity within the country in Indian rupee terms, we will price it at that level. We are offering very attractive rates to our customers and we are seeing flows. We believe that a vast amount of these flows will come in August and September because the offer is open till September 30th. We are working with our rep office in Dubai. The Dubai rep office, what it can do and what it cannot do has been an area of some focus with the Central bank of the U.A.E. and we are engaging with them to ensure that we operate to the maximum extent possible and permissible under the law.
One area where we do have a concern is that we don't have credit lines from external entities nor do we have an entity in GIFT City. Consequently, offering leverage for us is not possible. Therefore, by definition, the customers who at this point in time are placing deposits with us are those who are placing unlevered deposits. Well, we are working with foreign banks to get ourselves lines, but those have not materialized as of this moment. If they do happen, then our volumes will materially change. Right now, the pace of growth is good, and we are quite confident that we will get reasonable numbers.
Sure. Thank you, sir, for answering all my questions.
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Parth Gutka with 360 One Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Thanks a lot for the opportunity. Sir, I see security receipts have gone down on a QoQ basis. We would have recorded some income on the same. What was the quantum?
I'll request our CFO to answer that question. Security receipts, we got some INR 40- odd crores of cash.
Yeah. Security Receipts, in the beginning of the year, we had a balance of INR 190 crores, and we closed the quarter with a balance of INR 72 crores. There was a recovery of close to INR 47 crores.
Yeah, right, sir. We would have recognized some portion of it in the P&L side ?
No, we don't have anything upside on that with the P&L side. It's only the recovery of the principal.
Okay.
The upside was recognized when we recognized the SR itself. The entire SR was recognized as an upside.
Okay. Fair enough, sir. My second question was, if I look at a QoQ growth within the Gold loan book, it's just around 0.8% on a QoQ basis. What has actually happened in this quarter?
There was a change in our process and policies occasioned by the fact that the RBI had come out with a circular on Gold loans and which went into effect on the 1st of April. As a consequence, some of our other arrangements, which is basically where we were doing some co-lending and where we had some portfolio purchases and so on and so forth, those ran off to the extent of almost INR 270 crores or so. Our branch banking by itself grew quite nicely. Because of the runoff on our bulk deals, the net growth was only the number that you are talking about, which is roughly 80 basis points. Underlying core growth from our branches is quite solid, and we are reasonably confident that going forward, you will see material growth on the Gold loan business.
Thank you. Okay. Sir, my last question, SMA 1 and 2 both has gone up on a QoQ basis by roughly INR 80 crores. Anything to read into it?
SMA 1 and 2 always increases in the first quarter from the fourth quarter. It has a seasonality in it. You can see it in the prior years also. If you see March 2024 versus June 2024, you'll see that it goes up. If you see March 2025 versus June 2025 also, you'll see the same trend line. Nothing as of this moment, we don't see anything. Sorry. As of this moment, we don't see anything material in the changes. We've reviewed these numbers and we've seen the constituents of SMA 1 and 2 , and we believe that they are reversible and that they do not materially add to the risk that we are carrying.
Okay, sir. Thank you a lot for answering my question.
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Jai Mundhra from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, good evening, sir. Sir, a few questions. Sir, first is, ECL will also change the effective interest rate regime, right? Have you done any working? Will this change the NII in any manner or it is too early to say, or it does not change anything materially?
You want to answer that, Vinod?
Jai, good afternoon. With regard to the effective interest rate coming in as a part of ECL, we don't expect that there will be any material change. Of course, there is working still on. We are not in a position to give a concrete number. Initial workings reflect that there will not be any material change in what we have currently.
All right. Sure. Secondly, sir, this DICGC insurance. Now the insurance repricing is not uniform. Does this change any outgo for insurance or this is status quo or was there any benefit? If you can highlight that.
Because we also got benefited by that change. If you have seen the numbers on full year basis, there is a reduction of close to around INR 10 crores over there.
Sorry, reduction in percentage, it will be like 15% type reduction, right? For full year. Is that the right understanding?
Yes.
Okay. Sure. That is good. Lastly, sorry, second lastly, one, sir, if you have any breakup for this other income breakup into PSL, TW recovery and maybe FLDG and third party or something, just to understand the movement better of the non-core, non-treasury fees.
Okay. Broadly, as I already earlier mentioned, this quarter we don't have any income on the PSL side.
Okay.
That is obvious. Second thing, FLDG also currently we don't have any FLDG income on any of the products. Earlier it was with the credit card and that has been done away with as based on the updated guidelines. There is no FLDG as of now. By and large, we don't have any one-off income in the P&L side for the current quarter compared to the last year or last quarter.
Okay. TW recovery was around INR 60 crores, right? Which is what you said.
Yes.
Okay. Sure. Just a small clarification, sir. I think you mentioned that because despite there is a lot of, I mean, this quarter had a chunky disbursement in corporate, still the yield were favorable. Part of that is because of the T-bill movement, right? Within corporate, do you think you have scope to improve the yield or the spread?
It is a bit of both, Jai. I mean, some of it was T-bill movement, some of it is the market hardening.
Right.
Liquidity was a little tighter, therefore we took advantage of it, pricing to corporate went up. Otherwise, we wouldn't have grown the corporate book. It was opportunistic, it was available, pricing was better. On the retail side, prices were not moving upwards, whereas on the corporate they were moving upwards quite considerably, there we took advantage of that.
Right. Thank you, sir. Just a small parting message. You have been there for the three years and you have helped us a lot in understanding and explaining the bank. Wish you all the very best for your next inning. Thank you, sir.
Thank you very much, Jai.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Rohit Ahuja with LotusLion Venture. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. With CR at 19.6% and legacy book cleaned up, what's the three-year plan for deploying excess capital? Where do we see ROEs sustaining on a steady state basis?
The plan for deploying excess capital very clearly is to grow the balance sheet. Wherever the market is growing + 2%, a couple of percent above where the market is growing. Also to change the asset mix a little bit. Our CRAR is also helped by the fact that we have a large concentration of very low-risk assets where the capital charge is very low. But they also have the problem of being lower yielding. As we move up the capital charge ladder, automatically the spreads also improve for us. Some of it will get utilized as we originate more retail and MSME business, which is not necessarily rated AA A, where the capital charge will be closer to 100%, if not 150%. The risk density will increase as we start increasing all of this.
To answer your question very simply, our balance sheet will grow, the constituents of the balance sheet will change, and the CRAR computation will change accordingly and capital will get used because the asset structure has changed.
Right. Any guidance on ROEs?
We've been saying that we have a few levers for our financials to manage our financials. We have the ability to change the structure of our balance sheet on the asset side while keeping a tight lid on our costs. If you see our cost of money today, we believe that we are amongst the better placed institutions in our peer set. Obviously, we can't compete with the State Bank of India or any such other institution. Amongst our peers, we have arguably amongst the better cost of money. Therefore, our aim has been to grow our balance sheet at a rate at which we can continue to keep this advantage. Whereas on the asset side, we try and move away from the lower-yielding assets and move it into the higher-yielding assets.
I think as we do that, our return on assets will improve from where we are today. We had said that we'd be in the 100- 110, 115 range. Over time, that should sort of migrate to 120- 125. Given our leverage, you can compute the return on equity automatically. That's the trend line that we see. As of this moment, I'm hesitant to give you a more concrete answer, considering that I'm nearing the end of my tenure, and therefore, it would be inappropriate for me to proffer something which binds my successor.
Sure, sir. Thanks for that. All the best for your next journey.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of [Ravindra] and Individual Investor. Please go ahead. Mr. Ravindra, please go ahead.
Hello, am I audible?
Yes, please go ahead.
My question is to Mr. P. R. Seshadri. Thank you, sir, for serving three years and all the best for your new beginning. My only question is why don't South Indian Bank is having a leadership stability? Previously, Mr. Murali also left in three years, and you're also leaving in three years.
Mr. Ravindra, thank you very much for the question. I cannot really answer for Mr. Murali's decisions. I can only say that I was initially also, in my mind, I did not see this I'm leaving as a consequence of the fact that I believe that I want to do other things with my time. Considering my age, I believe that there comes a point in time when you have to lay down some of these roles and move into others, and that's the reason why I'm moving on. I can't really address the actions taken by others, Mr. Ravindra.
Okay, sir. My next question is on the net interest income. This quarter, it has grown very nicely. Is it sustainable in the coming quarters as well with this 100 bond?
I'll request our CFO to address that question.
Yeah, thank you, Ravindra. If you see the growth in the net interest income for the current quarter, as we already mentioned in the call, we had a couple of advantages which we derived from the repricing of bulk of deposits. Apart from that, another strategy what we implemented is that to reduce the bulk deposit by almost 50%. This advantage, what we got from the repricing of deposits may not be there in the same quantum in the coming quarters. Of course, we continue to ensure that the net interest income holds.
At the same time, another leverage that can come in favor of the bank is that, as we mentioned in the call then, in case if the interest rate cycle moves up and the repo rate increases, definitely that also will work in favor of the bank as we pass on this repo change from T +1 basis to the customers. That is also expected to be in favor of the bank over the period.
All right, sir. Thank you very much. That is my last question.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Aman from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thank you for the opportunity. Can you spell out the loan outstanding for retail as a whole segment and retail gold?
Aman, I think I'll request my team to give you the numbers. It's not available with me right away, but we can give you the numbers. Those are available in general. Yeah?
Sure, sir. I'll request you or Dolphy, sir, can speak about the prospect of MSME growth, MSME segment loan growth?
I'll request Dolphy to walk you through that.
Good afternoon, Aman. MSME, yes, the growth has been a little muted from our expectation. We were actually well-poised for this quarter, last quarter for scale. Unfortunately, there was too many uncertainties which probably gave us a caution to go a little slow. Having said that, the fraternity has reacted as business as usual, and that's giving us some confidence to make sure that this quarter we will go back to the scale mode. We intend to keep our narrative intact on changing the balance sheet mix from shrinking the corporate and increasing our contribution to the advance book from better-yielding assets, specifically MSME. That narration continues. I can only reassure you that we are on the narrative and the right direction.
Sir, what would be disbursement under the ECLGS scheme?
We have a limit set of about INR 400 crores as of date, a disbursement of about INR 238 crores exactly. The utilization is very struggle-ish. I think we have a utilized book of about INR 50- odd crores. That is yet to fructify, but we are on it. I think we're looking at progressively increasing that ECLGS contribution to the book.
Got it, sir. Just the last question, if you can give me breakup of upgrades, recoveries, and write-offs during the quarter if that is readily available.
I'll request Vinod and Seshadri to give you the numbers.
Sure.
Aman, with regard to the recovery side, the total recoveries for the current quarter was INR 179 crores. Out of that, technical write-off recovery from technical write-off account is close to around INR 57 crores. Interest from NPA that contributes to the net interest income as a part of recovery that is close to around INR 40 crores.
Got it, sir. Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you. On behalf of South Indian Bank, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.