Axis eyes to increase retail loan book share to 30%

MUMBAI: The third largest private lender Axis Bank today said it is working towards taking its retail loan-book to 30 per cent of the total assets over the next three to four years, as it sees the retail loan segment as a large market opportunity going forward.

"We want to increase the share of our retail loan-book to 30 per cent of our total asset book over the next three to four years from the present 21 per cent," Axis Bank senior Vice-President and Head (consumer lending & payments) Jairam Sridharan said here.

He was talking to reporters after launching Insta PIN, a facility that allows a customer to receive the ATM PIN, if lost, on the mobile phone through the bank's IVR system.

Explaining the strategy behind this aggressive retail loan growth strategy, Sridharan said going forward the bank sees retail loan growth will be driven by the small towns and Tier 2 & 3 cities.

"If the latest numbers are any indication, already this is visible as only 60 per cent of the loan business now comes from the top eight metros, which was over 85 per cent a couple of years ago. Going forward, this will only increase from small towns."

Towards achieving this, the bank is increasing the number of its focused branches from the present 650 spanning 100 cities, mostly Tier 2 & 3 centres, he said.

Again, the bank has 85 exclusive loan processing centres, apart from the 1,446 branches in 953 locations. Axis has overseas offices in Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Colombo, Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

In the first half of this fiscal, the bank's retail loan book stood at Rs 29,328 crore, which clocked a CAGR of 26 percent since 2008, Sridharan said.

Of this as much as 76 per cent is home loan, 13 per cent auto, 4 per cent personal loans, 2 per cent credit cards and 5 per cent non-schematic exposure which primarily includes over draft on current accounts and fixed deposits, he said.

The industry average for retail home loan is 66 per cent, Sridharan informed.

The bank had a retail customer base of one crore (active debit cards) and a credit card base of 6 lakh by the end of the last fiscal.

The bank hopes to close this in the current fiscal at 1.15 crore and 8 lakh respectively, Sridharan said, adding its credit card business is already in cash profit now since the massive run-on after the 2008 crisis.

Its credit card book size stood at Rs 515 crore last fiscal and there is no delinquency now, despite the rising interest rates, Sridharan added.

Within the industry, HDFC Bank leads in retail loan with as much as 50 per cent of its assets coming in from this segment, followed by ICICI Bank with 40 per cent, SBI with 23 per cent, Axis at 19 per cent and IDBI Bank with 18 percent as of March 11, Sridharan said.

For the September quarter, Axis posted a net profit of Rs 920 crore, up 25 per cent from Rs 735 crore in the year ago period on growth in both interest as well as non-interest income. Net interest income rose 24 per cent to Rs 3,688 crore from Rs 2,429 crore last year.

Source: EconomicTimes