by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Commodity Market, Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Investing, Large Enterprise
Kolkata : In a bid to strengthen the retail loans portfolio, the private lender Bandhan Bank is focusing on gold loans along with affordable housing segment, a top official said on Thursday.
“We have started gold loan facilities for our customers five months ago. Going forward more urban branches will offer this product,” bank’s Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Chandra Shekhar Ghosh said.
“We are seeing good response in gold loans. The bank would like to grow this business in certain pockets of urban areas,” Ghosh said.
He said currently, the lender was “providing gold loans facilities from its 25 branches” and would “scale it up”.
It would charge around 16 per cent interest rate on gold loans but the rate would vary according to purity of gold.
Presently, micro-lending constitutes around 90 per cent of the bank’s total loan portfolio.
The lender, however, was looking for a change in the business mix in the next three to five years.
“We expect in the next 3-5 years non-micro loans will be around 25 per cent of our total loan book,” Ghosh said, adding that “another focus area is affordable housing segment.”
Meanwhile, the private lender has started the process of identifying the investment bankers in order to initiate the listing in the stock exchanges.
According to Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) guidelines for the universal bank licence, the lender was required to get its shares listed on the stock exchanges within three years of commencement.
The erstwhile micro-finance firm had received in-principle approval from the apex bank in April 2014 and the final nod came in June 2015. The city headquartered bank had started operations on August 23, 2015.
“As per RBI requirement, we have to list on the stock exchanges. We have started the process of identifying investment bankers,” he said while celebrating the completion of bank’s two years’ operations on Thursday.
He said the process is “long” and timing of its launch of Initial Public Offering (IPO) would depend on “market conditions”.
“So, it is difficult to estimate exactly when the IPO would happen or how much fund will be raised,” Ghosh said.
According to him, the bank, going forward, would also be focusing on increasing its advances to the MSME and also pointed out that there was a scope for the bank to expand its reach to the unbanked region.
The lender was in discussion with insurance companies and mutual funds to offer financial products through its network of branches and outlets, he said.
The lender currently has a network of around 840 branches and 383 ATMs serving a customer base of 11 million.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Buzz
Kolkata (IANS) Bandhan Bank reported a net profit of over Rs.275 crore over seven months and seven days of the fiscal 2015-16.
During the period under review, the Kolkata-based bank — which started operations in August 2015 — posted a total income of Rs.1,082 crore. Its net interest income (NII) stood at Rs.932.72 crore.
The private lender’s gross advances were at Rs.15,493.97 crore, of which only Rs.156 crore was advanced to non-micro credit sectors.
“Despite spending on technology, infrastructure and new employees, the bank has posted a decent profit which is satisfactory and encouraging,” said Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, the bank’s managing director and chief executive.
The city-based private lender has expanded its operation across 29 states through a network of 670 branches and 234 ATMs. It opened over 15 million accounts, including deposits and advances.
The bank has collected deposits of Rs.12,088.75 crore and caters to over 8 millions deposit customers up to March end.
Its current account and savings account balance stood at Rs.2,605.59 crore — 21.55 percent of total deposits.
“We expect to achieve 30 percent credit and deposit growth by end of the March 2017,” he said.
The bank has also opened 21 small format branches, he said.
“The bank has 20,600 employees at present and with the expansion of network of branches and ATMs in the coming months, the employee number will go up accordingly,” he said.
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate finance
Bandhan chairman and managing director Chandra Shekhar Ghosh
Kolkata:(IANS) City-headquartered Bandhan Bank on Sunday became the first universal private bank in eastern India to begin its journey post independence with 1.43 crore accounts in place and a loan book of Rs.10,500 crore backed by capital of Rs.2,570 crore.
Bank founder and managing director Chandra Sekhar Ghosh – son of a sweet shop owner in Tripura’s Bishalgarh – said its capital infusion is much higher than the Reserve Bank of India’s licensing norms which stipulate Rs.500 crore capital for new banks.
Ghosh, who in 2001 set up the microfinance firm Bandhan which has now evolved into a bank, said the capital will soon be ramped up close to Rs.3,052 crore which will translate into 44.54 percent capital to risk weighted assets ratio for the new bank.
Inaugurating the bank, union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said: “A great institution is being born in West Bengal as Bandhan now evolves from a micro-finance institution into a regular bank. Ghosh tells me their priority is going to be the small and medium enterprises. Its a landmark initiative in the service of the country and the state.”
Already having 501 branches pan-India with 50 ATMs, Bandhan Bank plans to increase the branch count to 632 and ATM count to 250 across 27 states by the end of the current fiscal.
Ghosh, 55, said Bandhan will prioritise on giving loans to the rural unbanked people besides mid-sized regular loans, but avoid large corporate loans altogether in the initial years of its operation.
“The micro-small-medium sector in the country needs lending support and we will strive to meet their demands,” he said at the launch.
Seventy one percent of the bank’s branches will be in rural India and at least 35 percent of the total branches will be in unbanked rural pockets.
Ghosh said the bank will be operating under two divisions – microbanking and general banking – and will offer complete retail financial solutions, including a variety of savings and loan products.
The savings bank account interest rate has been fixed at 4.25 percent for balance up to Rs.1 lakh and five percent for balance above Rs.1 lakh. For term deposits, the maximum interest rate has been fixed at 8.5 percent for one to three years, with an additional 0.5 percent for senior citizens.
Bandhan Bank is east India’s first private bank post independence and the first bank to open in the country after more than a decade.
Its former entity as a micro-lending firm had kept its bad loans as low as one percent which the bank will strive to maintain.
West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra and Reserve Bank of India deputy governor H.R. Khan were present on the occasion.
