IDFC Bank plans to increase its retail lending to ₹300-400 crore a month in the next two quarters from ₹260 crore now, helped by its network expansion and stronger focus on retail business.

“Every month we are adding about ₹260 crore in retail assets that we are originating ourselves,” he said. In the next two quarters, this will increase to ₹300-400 crore. Over ₹5,000 crore of retail assets will be added every year, Rajiv Lall, Founder Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer of IDFC Bank, said at the company’s annual general meeting here.

The bank is also making good progress on the CASA front and the portfolio grew to about ₹3,000 crore in the first quarter of this fiscal, from about ₹870 crore in the year-ago quarter. The bank is now acquiring 80,000 retail customers a month, who bring in an average savings of ₹10,000-11,000 per account, he said. As the bank continues to increase the number of branches and expand its network, it aims to double the monthly acquisition of customers.

In the next 36 months, IDFC Bank plans to increase the number of branches to 300-400 from 86 now. Banking outlets will be ramped up to over 3,000, from 358 now.

Shriram Group merger Responding to shareholders, he said: “We have learnt a lot from the acquisition of Grama Vidiyal Micro Finance. The cultural challenges will be manageable if the IDFC Bank-Shriram Group merger goes through”. The proposed merger with Shriram Group will significantly bring down the cost of borrowings for Shriram City Union Finance (SCUF) and increase the earnings of the merged entity, he explained.

Also, the employees of SCUF will actually be kept as part of the banking correspondents’ distribution network of IDFC Bank. Only assets and liabilities of SCUF will move to the bank.

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