ICICI Bank beats estimates to post 17% rise in Q4 profit

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

ICICI Bank, the second largest non-state lender by assets in India, on Saturday reported a better-than-expected 17% increase in net profit for the fourth quarter, helped by strong demand for loans and lower provisions.

The Mumbai-based bank posted a net profit of ₹10,707.5 crore for the quarter ended March 31, compared with the average estimate of ₹10,489 crore by analysts tracked by Bloomberg.

For fiscal 2024, ICICI Bank reported a net profit of ₹40,888 crore, up 28% from fiscal 2023. Its board recommended a dividend of ₹10 per share for the year.

The bank's objective is to maximise overall profitability, executive chairman Sandeep Batra told the media, but declined to give any growth guidance. He hinted that the country's economic activity would be one of the levers of growth for the bank.


Batra said the bank spent 9.4% more in fiscal 2024 on information technology, to strengthen its systems to deal with outages and cyberfraud. «We will continue to enhance the use of technology in our operations… IT resilience and customer security are paramount. There is no constraint on the IT budget,» he said, responding to a query on whether the bank had received any warnings from the sector regulator over its IT systems.

On Wednesday, the Reserve Bank of India restricted Kotak Mahindra Bank from onboarding new customers on mobile apps and spot issuing new credit cards, citing «serious deficiencies and non-compliance» of regulations.