Six months after assuming office at the helm of Karur Vysya Bank, its Managing Director PR Seshadri, while stating that the century-old institution continues to serve the needy and small businesses till date, said “we are now aiming to transform ourselves to a full service bank”. Seshadri spoke to BusinessLine on the bank’s transformation plans and growth strategy. Excerpts from the interview:

You have been servicing both retail customers and small businesses all along. So what is this transformation all about?

Yes, we have been offering services to all sections of the populace, including large corporates and institutions. Now, we have embarked on a technology transformation mission. This is expected to ease the process of availing retail loans as compared to the past.

Until now, we were more aggressive on the deposit front. We plan to address the retail lending space more aggressively. We recently launched a personal loan product, tailored to suit various needs.

We will also be launching a technology platform for small businesses. This would be a structured technology solution, and may be the first of its kind in the industry.

We want to deepen our relationship with our retail depositors and refocus our strength in Tamil Nadu and South India.

Does that mean you will be increasing your presence in your home State?

Yes, the newer branches will be in the South, mainly to take advantage of our strength here. Karur is a textile hub and textiles have been at the core of our business for a long time.

Again, although we have a pan-India presence, more than 80 per cent of our branch network is spread across Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

Around 425 of our 770-plus branches are in Tamil Nadu. We will be further strengthening our base here.

You’ve said that textiles account for a core part of your business. But the industry has been under pressure. How do you plan to tackle it

We have underwritten it adequately. It’s simple. When you understand the business, you can underwrite adequately.

But your NPAs have been high

It’s not from textiles, but on account of the corporate exposures in the last seven to eight years — the big-ticket loans. We intend to avoid larger consortium lending and cap our exposure.

Credit offtake continues to remain poor. So, what about your growth prospects?

Our strategy is to grow our balance sheet in line with the market. While the balance-sheet growth might be slow, we want to focus on better revenues and margin. The net interest margin is around 3.8 per cent and we intend to retain it at that level.

We registered reasonable credit growth during the last quarter. We are seeing green-shoots, but not chasing loans.

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