Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to CSB Bank Limited Earnings Call for Q2 FY 2027 financial results hosted by YES Securities Limited. Please note all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Please note that this conference is being recorded. With that, I hand over the call to Mr. Shivaji Thapliyal from YES Securities. Thank you and over to you, sir. Thank you, Swapnil. Good evening and a warm welcome to all those who have joined the call. The CSB Bank management is represented by Mr. Pralay Mondal, Managing Director and CEO, Mr. B.K. Divakara, Executive Director, and Mr. Satish Gundewar, Chief Financial Officer. We specifically thank the management of CSB Bank for giving YES SECURITIES the opportunity to host their result call. The management will first be making some opening remarks, after which we will throw the floor open for questions. I now invite the management to make their opening remarks. Pralay, over to you. Thank you, Shivaji, and thank you, everybody, for joining our call for Q2 FY 2027. Let me start by wishing everybody happy Diwali in advance and festivities of the year. On the macroeconomic side, I think especially in the banking landscape, the global environment continues to be uncertain. Financial market volatility and geopolitical uncertainties continues to persist. Global growth is revised upwards at 3.1% for 2026 and 3.4% in 2027, with stagflation risk continue to remain a possibility. Global inflation is also projected to move upwards to 4.7%. Midterm elections in U.S. and some agreement on ceasefire with Iran will decide the future course in energy prices and global growth. On the domestic front, RBI has revised upwards India's GDP growth to 7.1%, along with several other global agencies like ADB and IMF. India continues to be one of the fastest-growing major economies in the world and is outperforming global peers. The major setback to the Indian economy this year is rising crude prices, which put pressures on INR and domestic rates. Central Bank has brought currency situation under control by opening FCNR swap window for banks and NRI deposits have raised repos rates to contain inflation. The excess liquidity that persisted in the system due to FCNR deposits is gradually getting utilized. On the growth outlook, the economic outlook for India remains positive. The resilience in Indian economy is largely due to robust domestic demand, government infra-spending and steady service sector, even as global geopolitical and trade headwinds continue to pose external risks. India remains the fastest-growing economy in the world despite facing exceptionally high crude oil prices. The growth outlook remains robust, however, continued conflict in Gulf and second-order impact of El Niño may knock off few basis points from the upcoming quarters. Monetary, regulatory, and fiscal policies remain aligned with the growth objectives, with RBI projecting a real GDP growth of 7.1% and CPI inflation expectation of 5.2% by FY 2026, 2027. Coming to CSB specifics, we had a fairly good quarter overall. On profitable side, net profit stood at INR 183 crore for Q2, with a sequential growth of 22% and year-over-year growth of 14% over Q2 FY 2026. Operating profit of the bank grew sequentially by 10% and stood at INR 276 crore for Q2 FY 2027. Net interest income stood at INR 510 crore for Q2 FY 2027, growing by 7% quarter-on-quarter and 20% on a year-over-year basis. Other income grew substantially sequentially by 20% over Q1 FY 2027, while other income excluding treasury profit grew by 27%. Cost to income ratio for Q2 FY 2027 stood at 64.8%. NIM for Q2 stood at 3.81%, as against 3.66% for Q1, and 3.81% for Q2 FY 2026. ROA for the quarter ended 30/09/2026 at 1.29%, as against 1.09% for Q1 FY 2027. Contingency provisions are held intact and bank is continuing with accelerated loan provisioning policy, which will aid the bank in transitioning towards the ECL framework. On the liability side, deposits recorded a strong year-over-year growth of 18%, CASA ratios stood at around 19%, just short of 19.96%. To aid the liquidity, we also availed both domestic and FCY borrowings based on cost and tenure considerations. On liquidity side, management has managed the liquidity risk very well. CD ratio stood at 90.39%. Average LCR for the quarter is at 127%. NSFR ratio was at 124%. Asset growth on gross advances side registered a year-over-year growth of 22%. Yield on advances for Q2 FY 2027 stood at 10.92% as against 10.65% in Q1 FY 2027. Asset quality metrics looked pretty good. On the GNPA and NNPA ratios in the quarter stood at 1.58% and 0.33%. PCR now stands at 87% with PWO and 79.19% without PWO. Bank is holding a provisioning buffer of around INR 177 crore over and above regulatory requirements. On the capital side, CRAR continued to be well above the regulatory requirement and stood at 19.55%. Tier one stood at 18.54%. Proportion of risk-weighted assets continued to be lower than compared to the industry. On the shareholder value creation, book value per share stands at INR 290. EPS for Q2 FY 2027 stood at INR 42 as against INR 35 for Q1 FY 2027. ROE for the quarter improved from 12.71% Q1 to 14.74% in Q2 FY 2027. Talking of distribution, we have a network of 872 branches and 844 ATMs as on September end 2026. In conclusion, I'd like to say that we believe we delivered a very healthy growth across our key business metrics during this quarter, reflecting sustained business momentum. Deposits grew by 18%, while advances registered 22%. Our liquidity profile remained comfortable. Average LCR 127% and NSFR 124%, and we continued to optimize our cost of funds through balanced mix of portfolio on deposits, borrowings, foreign currency borrowings, certificate of deposits and other funding sources, refinance, et c, while maintaining an optimal liability tenure profile. On the asset side, we achieved healthy momentum across gold and corporate segments with year-over-year growth of 36% and 44% respectively. Growth in the SME segment remained moderate as we continue to calibrate a cautious approach. But I am happy to report that we will start seeing the growth on the SME side this quarter onwards because most of the portfolio-related issues we faced in SME for the last one year or one and a half years is by and large corrected now. Growth in retail portfolio, including gold, was driven mainly from secured or income-generating assets. While we chose to degrow the loan against security, which is primarily loan against gold for the personal businesses, which as per regulation, we have effectively stopped and it has almost come to nothing right now. On the unsecured cards, Agri, MFI, et c, due to regulatory and other risk considerations we have remained cautious. Effective management of funding costs and asset yields enabled us to improve our net interest margin to 3.81% from 3.66% in Q1 FY 2027. As I said before, the wholesale banking momentum is picking up very well across all the three segments. I will talk about it a little later when the questions come in. From a profitability perspective, our performance ratios remain very strong with net profit growing by 14% compared to Q2 FY 2026. Net interest income recorded a healthy growth of 20% over Q2 FY 2026. Asset quality remains stable and key metrics continue to be strong, well within our stated guidance. The efforts undertaken during the Sustain-Build-Scale phases of our SBS 2030 journey have established a solid foundation aligned with our strong long-term vision. Our focus is now to expand our geographical footprint and deepening relationships across customer segments, including retail, MSME, and corporates. In fact, some of the distribution which we are creating in the last two years in slightly larger markets, especially North, West, South, and partially we have started expanding in East as well because that is a good liability base to work on. On all our businesses, some of the metro markets have started showing the expansion, especially after the whole system and the technology development and transformation exercise has been completed. Still, some more stuff is going on out there on the technology side, on the transaction banking, and some of the other advanced digital framework, which I will talk about it later as the questions come. We believe that our investments, which went into the metro and urban markets over the last few years, are going to start paying off, and now it is already showing because the jaws are opening in these markets very well, both in terms of deposits and in terms of assets right now. Within retail banking, our focus will be on customer acquisition, especially on the liability side, and building a profitable granular franchise. Our retail asset portfolio strategy will remain centered on maintaining a balanced lending book with a greater emphasis on secured income-generating assets, collateral-backed products. Growth in unsecured lending will be calibrated and largely limited to well underwritten existing customers, leveraging strong internal behavior insights and data analytics. We rush in this till we build the liability franchise well, which has just started and momentum is picking up. On the back of cross-sell, the unsecured part of the business will start probably FY 2028 onwards. On the corporate banking side, as I said before, we will continue to deepen our engagement with large corporates and conglomerates through relationship-led coverage complemented by sector-focused banking solutions. This will be driven through a corridor-based approach with strong emphasis on India's key economic clusters. The good part is there are three segments there. The corporate banking, the mid-market, and the FIG, which is the financial markets. Broadly, all these are almost equal. That was what our objective was. Corporate banking and mid-market is growing faster, and hence we believe that we will have a right balance within the corporate segment. With transaction banking now playing a very large role with all the systems and solutions coming in play, we see a large play in the corporate banking, leading to mainstreaming in the SME and other businesses as well. For MSME business, with the operating structure, leadership team, and business capabilities now in place, and with our portfolio now doing well and under control from a quality perspective, we are well positioned to accelerate growth and capitalize on emerging opportunities at the right time, which we will start seeing from this quarter. We will continue to invest in distribution technology, digital capabilities, and product innovation to enhance customer relevance, responsiveness, and overall experience. This phase is not only about accelerating growth, but also about ensuring that growth remains disciplined, sustainable, and aligned with our strategic aspiration of becoming a leading midsize bank with a strong pan-India presence. The tremendous success we got in our technology transformation journey, which we did last 18 months, is starting to pay off. Now I think we can dream to scale the bank to the mid-sector on the back of the technology and the leadership team which we have built up. With foundations firmly in place now, our focus is on delivering consistent outcomes and creating long-term value through sustainable and profitable growth. So we are very optimistic. The leadership team is very excited for the next two to three years because this is what we are waiting for so far, and hope that now every quarter we will see the delivery much faster and with more ambitious kind of a growth going ahead. With that, I end my initial remarks, and I will be open for questions. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin with the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may click on the raise hand icon from the participants tab on your screen. We request participants to restrict to two questions each, and then return to the queue for more questions. To rejoin the queue, you may click on the raise hand icon again. We will wait for a few minutes until the question queue assembles. We will take our first question from Akshat Agrawal of Nirmal Bang Institutional Equities. Akshat, please unmute your microphone and go ahead. Sir, thank you for the opportunity. If you can provide some color on sequential increase in other OPEX by 18% QoQ. Is it just seasonal or is there something else over there? Just trying to figure it out. Thank you. On the OpEx, I think overall our growth is around 18%, which is our OpEx says Q-on- Q is around 11% and YoY is around 3%, right? This is what? This is overall operating expense. Yes. Okay. But on the other OPEX, the 18% QoQ, where is it coming from? Large part is coming from technology because we have invested into technology, heavy investment, which is starting to come up. Technology is one of the biggest drivers, and obviously we are expanding our distribution and some of the infrastructure related spends also happened, so that is also increasing some of the costs. I think that's broadly the large items. On the staff cost, it's around 17%-18%. Rest are kind of a little bit over details, but primarily it is on the technology, staff, and infrastructure, primarily these three. Thanks for that, sir. My second question is on fee income. It has a strong sequential pickup. If possible, if you can provide some breakup and reasons for the strong growth, and how should we see it going forward? On fee, what has happened is our core fee businesses have done extremely well in terms of whether it is bancassurance, processing fee, almost all the fee lines has run extremely well. The core fee has grown by around, if I remember it correctly, 23%, 24% year-on-year. But what has happened is some of the non-core businesses, fees like PSLC and treasury especially. These are the two which. Treasury is primarily linked with the markets, okay? Core fee has grown by around 27%, and non-core fee has de-grown, which has led to a overall fee growth of around -22% when you look at year-on-year, and Q-on-Q, we have grown by around 20%. Having said that, even last year I had said that that was a one-off because our fee income was around 22%, 23% of total income, which is not really what we target for or what we are guided for. I told that time also. We always have maintained that we will have a core fee somewhere between 14%-15%. Overall fee somewhere around 17%-18%. As we talk, we are just short of 15% on core fee and just short of 18% on overall fee. So we are broadly in line, even at a time when the bond yields have touched unprecedented levels. Hopefully we'll be able to sustain our fee income, because that's what I always said, that our fee income is granular and detailed, so we will continue to grow that business. Thank you for that, and just a request, if you can provide a breakup if possible in terms of the fee income. Thanks a lot. All the best, sir. Thank you, Akshat. Thank you for your question. Thank you. We will take our next question now. We have Parth Gutka of 360 One Capital. Parth, please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. Thanks a lot for the opportunity. My first question is, sir, what led to the sharp improvement in the earn advances for the quarter? Two things happened, actually. One is our asset quality improved, and that helped to some extent in accumulation on the yield side. Also, we were very careful in terms of managing the yields, both on wholesale as well as the SME businesses. Gold yields also did pretty well for us. Between all of these, we very carefully monitored. Our cost of funds have remained the same on a quarter-on-quarter basis. That has remained the same, but we managed the yield and quality of portfolio. These four things helped us in managing our NIM better. Okay. Thanks a lot, sir. My second question is, again, as you alluded to the fact that gold yields have just increased by roughly 50 basis points on a quarter-on-quarter basis, as in improved by 50 basis points on a quarter-on-quarter basis. Anything to highlight here? As far as the disclosure goes, I think this is the highest we have done in the last six to seven quarters. Yeah. What we understood is that we have opportunity because we understand this business very well. Elasticity on the gold yield, we just thought that let's try and see what we can do because our distribution is huge. We are located in various locations, et c, including different geography. Given that, and given the yields at which some of the competition institutions, whether it is banks or non-banks, kind of offer, we were significantly had opportunity there. We used that opportunity to build the yield a little bit better. Let's see how much elastic it is. Right now, I think we are pretty good on the gold yield at this point of time. Whatever we have done, it has helped us. I think we took a smart move this quarter. Sure, sir. Thanks a lot, sir. Thank you, Parth. Requesting participants to please click on the raise hand icon from the Participants tab on your screen. We will move to our next participant. We have Rishabh Jogani of Dolat Capital. Rishabh, please go ahead. Rishabh, sorry, we are unable to hear you. Hello. Is it clear? Yes. Please go ahead. Okay. I have three questions. First is breakup of other income. Can you give that? Second one, other expenses were higher. I know you have explained it related to tech expenses, but I just was seeing that whenever our other income is high, the expenses are also high. Is there any relation to it? Third is, this quarter, there were elevated write-offs. Anything attributable to it? Our credit cost was low, but the write-offs were high. Yeah. Thanks, Rishabh, for your question. On the other income, I have given a detailed response, so there is nothing more I have to add. On the other income, again, I have given a very detailed response, which is, I assume that you mean other income, fee income. I have nothing more to share because we have given a very detailed reply on that. Coming to the third question, which is write-off. Yes, we had kind of a fully provisioned vintage book on the credit cards and some of the unsecured side, et c. As you know very well that on the unsecured side, beyond a point after you have provided, chances of recovery is few percentage points only after a certain vintage. So we decided that instead of carrying it in the book, and you are not even getting any benefits against that, they are not even PSL books, nothing. So we just thought we will write it off. It has no impact on the credit cost anyway. So, we are very happy with the 24 basis points kind of a credit cost, which we achieved this quarter. So, while it has some impact on GNPA, but NNPA credit cost, et c, by itself, the entire quality of that portfolio is looking very good. And which shows that now we are hopefully on a glide path on our guided GNPA, NNPA credit costs, and slippages. Even slippages were, slippages net of upgrades and recovery was quite good. So overall, I think it was a good quarter. So write-off is just a more technical kind of write-off, which is a financial transaction. It has very little meaning on credit cost at all. Okay, sir. But our PCR has improved, so our credit cost was low, our write-offs were more, but PCR has improved. If the fully provided book is written off, our PCR should go down, and it has improved. No, you are right. So we have taken some additional provisions because we thought the quarter is looking good, so we took the opportunity of adding some additional provisions into the book. So some of the cases where we could have taken a call either way, we have taken additional provisions. Okay. Thanks. Thank you, Rishabh. Requesting participants to please click on the raise hand icon from the Participants tab on your screen if you wish to ask a question. We will take up the next question now. We have Mr. Shivaji Thapliyal. Shivaji, sir, please go ahead. Yes. Thank you for the opportunity. The first question that I would like to ask is with regard to balance sheet growth. I think one of the actionables has been the buildup of retail deposits, and I think the technology has been put in place for that. What are some of the early signs with regard to that and what does that imply for loan growth for this year and beyond that on a steady state basis? That is the first question. Secondly, on the fee income aspect, would you like to make any comments with regard to the IRDAI consultation paper in terms of any long-term mitigating approaches that the bank may adopt, or what will it really mean for corporate agents in the long run? Thirdly, from an asset quality perspective, after a temporary wobble a few quarters ago, the bank seems to have settled down once again. So what is the kind of credit cost that we are looking at for this year as a whole, and then on a steady state basis beyond this year? These would be my three questions. Thank you. Thanks, Shivaji, for your questions and fairly detailed questions. Let me try and address. On the balance sheet growth side, I think we have said that we will grow faster than the system, and we have continued that. This quarter, of course, because of the FCNR and related opportunities, the overall ecosystem has grown a little faster. We were not a large player in FCNR, and we didn't have those leverage opportunities and things like that. To that extent, for us, it is pure, while we did some FCNR, but that is not something to talk home about. Ours is mostly organic normal growth, which we continue to do. To that extent, the growth will sustain what we are doing, and it is not just a quarter or a half year phenomenon. More important thing is how to build the franchise, and that's why we invested heavily into technology distribution and people and leadership. The technology, if I very briefly talk about it, three, four parts we have invested into. One is basically running the bank and building the bank. Secondly, creating the digital infrastructure. Thirdly, we are building lot of things on the back of our ServiceNow platform, which is being built in-house, which means the incremental cost of building lot of capabilities like CRM. Many things we are building on ServiceNow, which is helping us in taking lesser incremental cost on very huge capabilities we are building on ServiceNow platform and through the in-house teams. Fourthly, on the customer experience side, on the TBG side, whether it is supply chain, CMS, or trade, on the OBDX, on the corporate net banking, on corporate LOBs, all these developments are happening. OFSAA is just getting implemented as we're talking. There is a tremendous amount of capability which we have built now in technology, which needs to be leveraged. The next question is how to leverage and get businesses out of it. That's where not only retail wholesale, if you look at it this year, deposit accretion side as well. Retail, I will measure it by how we are building the customer base over a period of time. Because finally, your question on loan growth on the retail side will happen on the number of liability customers we'll get into the ecosystem, because that's where the cross-sell will happen. All of these things are getting in place. We have created VRM, virtual relationship management. We have created very large infrastructure in terms of how do we service our customers in our [Tier B] office. We just did our DC DR over a span of, went into DR and came back to DC within a span of 15, 20 days, when nobody even realized that this has happened. These things were unimaginable in this bank even few years back or few quarters back. Given all this, I think we are now ready to now launch the bank in its true sense in the scale phase, and hence we'll start seeing the retail starting to grow as well. But not immediately on the balance sheet side, but first on the customer side. We are starting first on the current account side because we have launched. Our mandate to the team is launching three to four products on the retail side, on liability side every quarter. In the last two quarters, we have done that already and we have seen some initial success on that. We are focusing on current account acquisition, and gradually we will build that story on the savings account acquisition as well. On the loan growth, I think we are growing reasonably well and while we had a muted growth on the SME side till now, once it starts contributing from this quarter onwards and with wholesale growing very well for us and quality growth. Gold continues to grow reasonably well, though we are not growing gold as much as we are doing before because now we have all the free levers in place, so we are just not a single trick pony from that perspective. Given all this, I think we will have a more balanced growth across all the branches, which is really building a proper bank. On the fee income side, it is a question which we all have to answer gradually. We have to see how it plays out, because it is still a discussion paper, final guideline has not yet come. But indications or direction, it is very clear. But the advantage of a full-scale bank and a universal bank license bank with all this technology and other capabilities which we are talking about, is that we are not dependent on one business here and one fee product there. Banks have this advantage, because it holds our customers. So eventually, even if there are few percentage drops that happens on the fee income side, on the insurance, if it is good for the customer, there will be other avenues which will open up. So I do not think even if the guidelines comes exactly the way the draft guidelines has been given, there will be a little bit of a challenge in the short term, both in the insurance industry as in the banking industry, and for corporate agents from a fee income side. But we are small, so to that extent, for us, navigating the ship is a little easier. We think we have shown flexibility to do that. So, will it be that material? Answer is no, but do we need to navigate it a little better and understand this thing? We have to do that and figure out. But I do not think this will impact, at best it can impact 0.5% here and there, or 1% here and there in terms of overall fee income to overall income. So if we are saying 18% is the guidance, maybe it will come down to 17%, and then we will figure out how to take it back to 18%. At the same time, if the bond yields starts coming down at some stage, we are sitting on large AFS book, which should also help us in some non-core profits on that side. So overall, banking ecosystem is like that. You lose some, you gain some, and overall it remains. On the asset quality, I am very happy that we have started showing improvement not in one line, but across the lines, whether it is the slippages, whether it is the recovery and upgrades, whether it is a Gross NPA, Net NPA, credit cost, whichever way I look at it, every vector is looking good. I understand that people want to see this for the next two, three quarters to believe that this is a trend and this is not a one-off. We will prove that it is not a one-off in the next two to three quarters. Our SMA book is looking better in most of the businesses. Gold loan has traditionally had a large SMA book, which does not lead to any credit loss. Other than gold loan, everywhere else, the SMA book is also showing a sharp decline for us, which gives me a confidence that we have good trends going ahead on the asset quality as well. I think that is broadly what your question. I hope I could answer all your questions. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. We will take our next question now. We have Navneet Bhaiya, who is an Individual Investor. Mr. Navneet, please go ahead. Sorry. Good evening, sir. I hope I am audible. Yes, please. Okay. Good evening, Pralay. My question was, further to deliberate on the balance sheet growth. In your build and sustain phase that you had completed in FY 2026, the balance sheet of the bank was still growing quite reasonably. In fact, I checked it from a sequential basis. On an average, it was growing at about 5%-6% for 12 quarters in a row. Now that you are in your scale phase, do you see this growth accelerating over what you did in your build phase or, how is the growth going to be different from what you did in your build phase? Sure. Is that the only question? Then I will respond. Yeah. This is one, and some backdrop. I saw your disbursements in this quarter. It was lower than what you did in the same quarter last year. Your CASA percentage has also gone lower than what you did in the last year. I was just trying to get my expectations right in terms of what are we trying to achieve in our scale phase. Is it going to be faster overall? When would the numbers also start reflecting what we're trying to achieve in this phase? Yeah. Now I got the perspective, so let me respond. Let me answer the second part first, then I will move to the first question because these are related. The disbursements are, if you broadly see on the disbursement side, wholesale is there, SME is there, retail is there, and gold is there. These are the four places primarily we are talking about disbursements. Retail, we have not really taken off yet because we will do it only once the liability side of the franchise grows, and that's something where we are putting a lot of hard work on that. Now that we have the technology, we are launching products, we'll build that, and hence that part will happen only after that. Otherwise, we are unnecessarily building a risky portfolio, which we don't want to do. Wholesale disbursements have done well, but of course, wholesale always will have some quarters which has little more chunky disbursement and some quarters will be, because some of these businesses move from quarter -to -quarter. But broadly, they are doing extremely well on disbursement as well as growth. SME, we had disbursed flat-ish across, but we had some runoffs also, and we had some exits also because we had a very detailed analysis of the SME portfolio because on the quality side, we had some issues last year, and hence we also created exit list and we exited a lot of customers as well. Some we lost because of the kind of rates which they're asking for, we could not retain them. To that extent, while we disbursed, but we lost some, that's why SME didn't grow that much. SME disbursement was sort of flat-ish every quarter. But what has changed and moved the needle, what your question, is the gold disbursement. That's because now, previously what used to happen, if your portfolio is INR 19,000 crore, we used to disburse INR 16,000 crore because the customers will book it again, and that will be shown as a new disbursement. Now that regulators have allowed renewals, okay? Hence you are seeing that disbursements have naturally come down quite a bit, in spite of the fact that we are growing by around 34%, 36% on the gold loan. Having said that, we have taken a conscious call now that with wholesale and now SME also going to go, and eventually retail will also pick up. We don't need to only grow gold loan as a disbursement, and hence we need to have a reasonable mix. Based on our board guidance, we have decided that by the end of this year, our gold book, we should keep it somewhere around 50% as a mix, which we last year, we ended around 54%, even last quarter was 53%, without impacting ROA, ROE, and many other things. Okay? None of these will impact any of our financial parameters, but we will bring down gold business to somewhere around 50%, to create a more balanced kind of a bank, and that will ensure that all the sides of the banks are growing equally well. From that perspective, I think, gold disbursement is something which has shown some kind of a flat-ish or negative growth on the disbursement side, which is leading to this. Some part of this is regulatory in nature, technical in nature, because we are not renewing some of the stuff instead of closing and rebooking, which is shown as disbursement. Some of this is also a conscious call, not to focus only on gold loan as a business because we want to grow all the businesses together. That's broadly what's happening. Coming to the overall balance sheet growth, CASA you mentioned. CASA, I mentioned before as well that this is the last year where CASA will grow slower than the term deposits. From FY 2028 onwards, CASA will grow faster than TD, and then our CASA ratio will grow. That's only, there is no magic to it. It's maths. CASA has to grow faster than the TD, only then CASA ratio will start going up, and that will start happening from FY 2028. It is a well-calibrated, thought-out strategy, which we are working upon. And that will also help us in reducing our cost of funds because CA is somewhere we are focusing on, our wholesale is also doing some business there. And all of that together will help us in building a more profitable balance sheet. From that perspective, I think that we're on track in our scale phase and will continue to grow. Sir, just one overall commentary. In your build phase as well, you grew your balance sheet quite robustly, I would say, at a sequential growth of 5%-6% for almost 12 quarters in a row on an average. Now that you're in your scale phase, I'm not asking for one quarter, two quarter guidance, but where is your aspiration? Is it more than what your build phase is? Yeah. How should one think about it? If you ask me, aspiration, I can say, but what we guide is 30% -5 0% faster than the system. We know we didn't do that this quarter because the system grew much faster because of FCNR and other things. But generally, what we guide is 30% - 50% faster than the system, which will retain that. Going ahead, aspiration, of course, is more than that. It all purely depends on how well we are able to build the liability franchise. Because growth on the asset side is not a problem. With now all the cylinders firing, now wholesale, now SME will also start firing, and retail will fire on the back of customer acquisition. I think asset growth is not a problem for us. But we need to have a calibrated growth based on how quickly we can build up the liability franchise, and that's what will take us there. Now technology is there, teams are there, products are coming, so we should be able to grow it. But all these liability franchises takes few years to grow. It just doesn't happen overnight. Even if I add double the customer, it will not lead to balance sheet growth that much on the liability side. It takes two to three years to build that kind of growth on the back of liability. That's where, and hence, we have to continue to focus on little bit big tickets. We are around 48%, 52% on the retail, wholesale kind of deposits. Our FCY, CDs, all of that dependence will remain for some more time. Having said that, dependence will start coming down from next year with CASA growing and other things growing. I think we should be able to grow faster than what we have guided for going ahead from next year, FY 2028 onwards. This year we'll grow like this only. From next year onwards, we'll grow faster, but it all depends how well we are able to build a liability franchise. Mm. Great, sir. Thank you so much. I'll join back the queue. Thank you. Thank you so much, Navneet. We'll move to our next participant. We have Prabal Gandhi of InCred AMC. Prabal, please go ahead. Prabal, you can unmute your microphone and go ahead with your question, please. Hello, am I audible? Yes, we are able to hear you now. Thank you for the opportunity. Sir, first question is, since board had their meeting today, how are you thinking or how is the board thinking in the context of Fairfax and IDBI deal? With respect to that, I believe Fairfax also had a chunky deposit in the CSB Bank, about INR 4,000 crore-INR 5,000 crore. How are you thinking on both the aspects? Good evening, Prabal. First of all, the second one is very easy to answer because Fairfax has no deposit with the bank. Okay? I do not know whether regulatory it is allowed or not, a related party deposits, but I know that there is no deposit of Fairfax in the bank at this point of time. The related party number of INR 5,000 crore in the annual report, that does not pertain to the Fairfax? There is no deposit. What deposit related party? There is no deposit, Prabal. It may be other transactions which may be— No, there could be other transactions, but nothing to do with deposits. Okay? The second question on Fairfax, board have not even discussed this point in the last two board meetings. Because it is amply clear from the various media and other press releases which has been made by Fairfax and Prem, everybody, that they have got two years to decide on two options which has been given to them. At this point of time, they have the transaction to yet to complete, so it is too early to even discuss transaction. I am talking about the IDBI transaction, because there are formalities out there which has to be completed, the share purchase agreements, all of that, regulatory approvals and all of that stuff. So, I do not even think whether they have time to discuss this at this point of time. Our board has not discussed anything, and we are not even thinking on those lines at this point of time. As and when they come back and discuss with us, we will figure this out. But no, Fairfax does not have any deposits with us. Okay. The second question is on the gold loan. We saw a 6% year-over-year decline in the tonnage. How should we think about our market share in the gold loan business? Typically what happens is our segment is slightly higher end segment for gold loan compared to some of the NBFCs and some of the more focused gold loan kind of banks, which is also evident from the yields and the ticket size which we have and the quality of customers. In these segments, what typically happens is, let's say somebody, almost 23% of our gold loan is above INR 20 lakh kind of a value. These are not really the people who are taking gold loan to run their kitchen. They are taking it to run a business. It is like a, what should I say, cash flow for their business and is defined by how much cash flow they need, because they have enough metals in their hand. What typically happens is when prices goes up, golds come down, and when prices goes down, gold tonnage goes up and things like that. That typically happens. When you are seeing that our tonnage year-over-year has gone down, it is primarily happening because it had gone down in the, it has been going down in the Q3 and Q4 of last year as well, because that's where gold prices had gone up significantly. Okay? As we are talking, we are not seeing too much of a outflow of tonnage on a daily basis or a quarterly basis. But we had seen, and because it is an annual number, it is showing annual tonnage de-growth of almost close to double digit. Okay? It depends on the customer's requirement, and hence, it's only a collateral. It's not that just because he has more collateral, he'll take more loans. It's not that segment we are operating in. That's one reason. Second reason is also, as I said before, that we want to focus on. Now that we have the system, so far we didn't have a choice because we didn't have the right kind of a technology, right kind of a system, right kind of products, right kind of franchise on all the verticals. Now that we have got all of that together, we would rather focus on TBG and SME, and as and when we want to focus on the retail assets, we'll do those things. It will be a more distributed bank, and hence, we don't want to just focus only on gold loan as a business. Whatever is coming, we are good with that. But as I said before, first we will achieve somewhere around 50% mix from our 54% last year, then we will further take it down because I had given a glide path of going to 32% gold by 2030. So to keep that trend going, naturally we will continue to see this happening. Understood. On the LTV side, when I compare CSB Bank's gold loan LTV with, say, peers like Karur or Federal Bank, their LTV is somewhere between 60%-65%, but for us, that number is about 75%. So how should we read into this? We have a slightly larger Agri portfolio, and in Agri portfolio, LTV allowed is much, much higher, and that is what is leading to this. Also, Agri portfolio gives us PSLC and other benefits as well, which helps us overall. I think that is a conscious strategy which we have played out. We have managed in the most difficult scenario when LTV was brought down regulatory from 90% to 75%. So we know how to handle this. Even if there is a drop sensitivity analysis we do, even if a drop in price and gold further, though it has dropped enough, I think it is going around INR 4,000 crore something globally. But I do not think this is something which is of any worry to us given the kind of quality of customers which we have and also the segment we operate in. Also, from a regulatory perspective, we are very comfortable because a large part of our portfolio is Agri portfolio. Understood. Thank you, sir. All the best. Thank you. Thank you, Prabal. Thank you, Prabal. We will take our next question now. We have Sameer Baisiwala of Sakman Capital. Sameer, please go ahead. Thank you and good evening, everyone. Pral, what is the outlook for ROA for this year and next year, and what are the drivers for that? Thanks, Sameer. Generally, if you look at the trend for us over the last one or two years, you will see that we start with a very ROA in the first quarter and peak in the Q4. This year is also looking the same, and you have seen quarter-on-quarter the ROA has moved to now 1.29%. I think while we wish to go towards a 1.5%, we will be somewhere between this and 1.5%, somewhere in between we will be there this year. Eventually, next year, because most of our other ecosystem and our cost of funds, everything will start coming down. This year something very special happened, which I said before that last year we had a very big income on the non-core side, which is treasury and PSLC. The differential between that income and this income is so high that even if you get some of this income back next year, I am not expecting it this year, there is too much to expect, but next financial year, hopefully we will get some of this income back into the system. If that happens, I think because this year everything has gone wrong when it comes to ROA for a bank like us, given our dependence was on the fee income a little bit more. Even in spite of that fact, we are showing ROA, which is around close to 1.3%, which was our benchmark for this quarter. So next year, I think we can safely say that we will cross 1.5%, and our objective is to be between 1.5% - 1.8% next year. Probably closer towards 1.5%. Eventually, we want to aim somewhere close to a 1.8%. It all depends on how the bond yields and other things also shape up next year, not this financial year, but next financial year. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. We have a follow-up question coming in from Mr. Shivaji Thapliyal. Sir, would you like to go ahead, please? Yes. Just wanted some color on net interest margin. What are we looking at for the full year and beyond that, in FY 2028, and beyond? What kind of margin are we looking to settle at? Thanks. Good question, Shivaji, but we will have a consistent response on this. I had always said that our net interest margin, we are aiming somewhere around 3.75%-3.8%, that level. We are a little higher than that. We are not targeting a 4%, we will be below 4%. But we are pretty much will be where we are at this point of time. Having said that, if you look at slightly longer term, because I think you asked also next year. What will happen is, the core fee income will grow even more, okay? Because we expect a lot of income to come from the If not treasury, which is not necessarily core income, but from wholesale banking, from SME, from transaction banking, especially because we are investing heavily into transaction banking. And as retail starts picking up, there we will get some fee income. A lot of these things also, overall income trajectory, in spite of there are some question marks on the insurance income on the corporate agency side or bancassurance side. I think we should be able to safely assume 18%-20% on the fee to total income. Very, very safely we can assume that. Given that, I think we will be happy to retain a NIM somewhere around 3.75%, if we can, next year. Because as our mix changes in the bank, the only way we can retain the NIM is by bringing down the cost of funds. And that is something which we are going to focus on, and hence we are going to focus a lot on current accounts and across all the franchise. Whatever change happens on the yield side because of the mix change in the bank, which is a very welcome move and everybody has asked for it, including board, and we are working on that, we will compensate by cost of fund. Because still our cost of fund is slightly high, 6.55% is on the higher side. I would say that we would aim to bring down cost of funds to somewhere around 6% next financial year, which will give us a 50 basis points lift. Some of that will be absorbed because of the business mix change. From a ROA perspective, I am more positive because the core fee income will do better, and that will effectively give us a better ROA than where we are sitting today. Thank you. Thank you so much, sir. As there are no more questions in the queue, we will take this as the last question. I will now hand it over back to the management for further proceedings and closing remarks. Over to you, sir. Thank you very much, and thanks everybody for joining our Q2 FY 2027 earnings call. It is a privilege to address all of your questions. Let me assure you that in spite of some of the challenges and some of the other global uncertainty, your bank remains very focused on delivering the SBS 2030 objective. In the scale phase, now we have everything with us, especially the technology leadership and distribution. Rest is a question of execution, and we believe that we have a very good execution team with us. With that, we think that best is yet to come. Thank you very much and have a wonderful evening. Thank you. On behalf of CSB Bank Limited, that concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for joining us, and you can now click on the leave icon to exit the meeting. Thank you, everyone.