Bank of India conducted a conference call on 13 May 2024 to discuss the financial results for the quarter ended March 2024. Rajneesh Karnatak, MD&CEO of the bank addressed call:

Highlights:

The bank is focused on generating low cost Casa and retail deposits. On the advances side, the focus is on retail, agriculture, MSME and mid corporate loans. The bank is also focused on maintaining asset quality, improving collection efficiency and digitization.

The business of the bank has increased by 12% to Rs 13.23 lakh crore end March 2024.

The deposits increased 14% to Rs 5.85 crore with CASA deposits rising 7% to Rs 2.69 lakh crore. Casa ratio stood at 43% end March 2024.

Domestic advances increased 11% to Rs 4.92 lakh crore with the retail, agriculture and MSME loan book rising 16% to Rs 2.74 lakh crore. The retail advances increased 18% to Rs 1.1 lakh crore.

The global NIM stood at 2.97% and domestic NIM at 3.34% in Q4FY2024.

The bank has reduced gross NPA ratio by 233 bps to 4.98%, while the net NPA ratio has been reduced by 44 bps to 1.22% end March 2024.

The bank is targeting domestic loan growth of 13% and the domestic deposit growth of 12% for FY2025.

The bank is targeting net interest margin of 3% for FY2025. The bank is planning more digital initiatives to improve customer experience.

With the new draft guidelines on provisioning for projections, the bank expects a marginal 10 bps increase in credit cost, while the impact on the capital adequacy ratio is expected to be nil.

The bank has witnessed elevated fresh slippages of Rs 2038 crore in Q4FY2024, of which agricultural and MSME loan book contributed 70% of fresh slippages. In the large corporate segment, 1 account of Rs 440 crore from the Odisha and one state government account in Punjab with the exposure of Rs 300 crore has aslipped to has slipped to NPA category.

The SMA loan book has declined to Rs 7100 crore of which Rs 4400 relating to four account relating to the Telangana Government has mainly contributed to the SMA accounts. Excluding this, the SMA loan book at Rs 2600 crore is 0.47% of the loan book.

The bank is targeting to contain fresh slippage ratio below 1.2% for FY2025.

RoA stood at 0.7% in FY2024 and the bank aims to improve RoA to 0.9% in FY2025.

The bank has technically written off loan book of Rs 43000 crore end March 2024. The bank had recorded recoveries from written off accounts of Rs 6300 crore in FY2024.

The co-lending loan of the bank stands at 4000 crore which is generated from 7 to 8 partners.

The bank has shifted to the new tax regime from September 2023.