Standard Chartered Bank holds the line as global turmoil tests deal flow

Mint reported on 25 March that about ₹18,000 crore of planned fundraising was at risk.“There is a direct impact on the supply chain, but there is a second-order impact too, which is what we try to understand and work with our clients,” said Singh. “Based on the impact on currency, commodity and their own input pricing changes, we also do a real-time risk assessment as much as we can and make sure that the client is also aware of that.”Singh said Standard Chartered is involved in a large number of loan syndications in the country.

The bank is associated with 44% of all syndicated loans by value in India. In the corporate segment, 80% of the largest market cap entities in the country and a large number of small businesses are its customers, he said.The bank had gross advances of ₹1.31 trillion as of 31 December, a tad lower than ₹1.33 trillion a year ago.

Its asset quality has shown an improvement, with gross bad loans at 2% of all loans as of 31 December, down from 2.3% a year ago, according to regulatory disclosures.Singh said Standard Chartered has been careful about the risk-return parameter, but added that these are also times when one has to support clients based on understanding of the risks and the ability to help.Asked if he has tightened the risk parameters, Singh said the bank has “not changed anything, but it's fair to say the monitoring has gone up to a more frequent basis”. “We know the sectors, we know the entities, we know the companies that are more impacted and less impacted and therefore the monitoring on some of those have gone up from a risk perspective for sure.”He said India is a competitive market, and therefore, one has to be in line with what the market is doing.