Capital Small Finance Bank looks to double advances growth, eyes branch expansion

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Capital Small Finance Bank is eyeing a 22-24% advances growth in FY25, double of the pace it achieved last fiscal while it is eying geographic expansion to support it. The Jalandha-headquartered lender is also planning a foray into Jammu with a couple of branches.

«After raising growth capital, we are now poised to grow faster,» executive director Munish Jain told ET. «Last year our growth was subdued as we were highly leveraged. We were waiting for the growth capital, he said.

Its gross advances rose just about 12% year-on-year to Rs 6,160 crore.

The bank raised about Rs 523 crore through an initial public offer last December. The IPO comprised a fresh equity issue of Rs 450 crore and an offer for sale (OFS) of 15.61 lakh shares.

The bank, which primarily caters to the middle income segment in Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi, has a diversified portfolio with 99.9% secured advances.

It had no microfinance lineage unlike most of its peers. It was India's largest local area bank since January 14, 2000, before its transition to a small finance bank in April 2016. Agriculture loans account for 37% of its portfolio, while 26% of it is mortgage and 19% MSME loans.

Its gross non-performing assets ratio remained steady at 2.76% at the end of March while net NPA ratio stood at 1.40% against 1.36%.

«Our NPA management is purely recovery based. We have not sold or gone for write-off of bad loans since our inception,» Samra said.