Bandhan Bank Q1 net Rs 482 crore, to focus on micro-credit, retail

Kolkata: Bandhan Bank on said it would continue to focus on micro-credit financing and retail loans, as it enters the third year of operations.

The Kolkata-headquartered bank reported a 47.5-percent rise in its net profit for the first quarter ended June to Rs 482 crore, as against a bottomline of Rs 327 crore a year ago.

MD and CEO of Bandhan Bank Chandra Sekhar Ghosh told reporters here that the lender would complete three years of operations in August, and continue to focus on micro-credit financing as it has been its forte.

Besides the micro-financing sector, the bank would lay focus on retail, affordable housing and MSME segments, he said.

Net interest income (NII) of the lender during the reporting quarter rose to Rs 1,037 crore compared with Rs 743 crore in the year-earlier period.

Gross Non-Performing Assets (NPA) increased to 1.26 percent of gross advances as against 0.93 percent in the comparable period of the last fiscal.

The net NPA, too, grew to 0.64 pr cent or Rs 194.2 crore from 0.56 percent in the year-ago period.

The bank's total deposits stood at Rs 30,703 crore as on June 30, 2018, he told reporters here.

Micro-credit constituted 85 percent of the total advances of the lender.

Retail deposits accounted for 80 percent of the total deposits and the remaining were bulk deposits, Ghosh said.

The bank has a total of 937 branches, which is likely to go up to 1,000 by the end of this fiscal, he added.