CSB Bank plans to grow its balancesheet and is working on a number of retail products and is also finalising a strategy for the wholesale banking business.

“We need to grow our balance sheet and a become larger bank over a period of time. Most of our ratios, most of our basic parameters are looking very good. The only place where we need to now start focusing on is growth in the balance sheet. We have a full service bank license and we must leverage that and have all products and services,” said Pralay Mondal, Deputy Managing Director, CSB Bank.

‘Retail segment will drive growth’

“Retail is where the growth will come in the long run and will drive the growth of the bank,” he said in an interaction with BusinessLine, adding that the bank will offer a comprehensive range of products and services over the next 18 to 24 months.

The lender’s advances grew 11.42 per cent on a year-on-year basis to ₹14,362 crore as on December 31, 2021. Gold loans accounted for 37.3 per cent of the advances mix and retail loans were at 7 per cent at the end of the third quarter of this fiscal.

Over the next five to six years, the bank wants to bring the share of retail loans including gold loans to about 50 to 55 per cent of the advances while wholesale and SME would be about 20 per cent to 25 per cent each of the book.

CSB Bank is also partnering with other companies for insurance, mutual fund and wealth business. It has also tied up with HDFC Ltd for premium home loans. It has also got into partnerships to launch a credit card later this year.

Focus on SME segments

Mondal noted that the retail strategy will show results in about two to three years. The bank is also focussing on SME segment, where there is a lot of opportunity, as well as on the wholesale and midmarket segments.

On the wholesale banking front, the lender is finalising a strategy on segments that it wants to focus on and corporate bond markets may be a segment of interest.

“We don’t do too much of consortium lending. And given our balance sheet size, we cannot be participating in every corporate project because we don’t have that might yet. So, through corporate bond market one can participate in large corporates as well in some form,” Mondal said.

The bank is also planning to enhance its transaction banking capability between supply chain, vendor financing, channel financing, cash management services.

CSB Bank’s gold loan business continues to do well and is on a growth path.

“We were negative year-on-year in terms of value due to the LTV change but now we have turned neutral and for the rest of the year we will be positive. We are very bullish about the business and it is doing well,” Mondal said.

Gold will continue to be a major part of the portfolio for the next 12 to 18 months and after that it will start tapering down in percentage but the actual book will continue to grow,” he further said.

Related Topics