Okay, good evening and thank you for attending the IndusInd Bank's Q4 Results 2024 Investor Meet. At the outset, I want to mention the bank has completed 30 years of its operations a few days back. The journey wouldn't have been possible without your support and confidence in the bank. So I want to thank all of you for the continued support to the bank in these times. I look forward to your support and hope that the bank continues to do the way it has been performing and continues to perform on a sustainable basis. Let me start with some macro commentary and then go to bank-specific details. In the Indian economy has been resilient in navigating the global challenges. Real GDP growth is among the fastest in the major economies. Improving economic activity helped credit growth sustain above 16% during financial year 2024. While deposit growth is at 13% YoY, it picked up compared to 9.6% last year, the liquidity environment remains challenging for the system. Financial year 2025 expected to be a year of balanced growth for banking sector. We remain confident on our growth journey while being watchful about the inflation and the rate environment. Let me now focus on the key outcomes for Q4 financial year 2024 and for the full year. The retail deposit momentum continued during the year with retail as per LCR deposit growing at 18% year-on-year. Our loan growth was at 18% year-on-year driven by 23% growth in retail loans. Our vehicle business grew at 17% year-on-year, microfinance at 22% year-on-year, and other retail at 32% year-on-year. Within corporate, small corporates grew by 33% year-on-year, mid-corporates grew by 8% year-on-year, and large corporates grew by 13% year-on-year. We continued to scale up our new initiatives with affluent grew by 24% year-on-year, NRI deposit grew by 33% year-on-year. Our merchant loan book against which is originated via Bharat Financial has now crossed INR 5,500 crore mark while home loan book now stands at INR 1,792 crore. We saw sequential improvement in asset quality with slippages reducing across all the business units. Our Q4 financial year 2024 credit cost was 111 basis points and we closed the full year cost at 113 basis points within our communicated expectations. The profitability metrics have remained healthy and stable over the course of the year. These are the key financial highlights for the quarter. Our net profit for the Q4 was at INR 2,349 crore growing at 15% year-on-year. All key ratios are healthy with net interest margin at 4.26%, ROA at 1.90%, and ROE at 15.23%. Our gross NPA and NPA was stable quarter-on-quarter. These are balance sheet metrics which were largely disclosed earlier. I'm happy to share that our balance sheet has now crossed INR 500,000 crore mark. Now coming to the profit and loss for Q4 financial year 2024 and financial year and for the full year. Our NII grew by 15% for the quarter with stable margins. Other income grew by 16% year-on-year and 5% quarter-on-quarter. Core fee income was INR 2,293 crore grew by 6% quarter-on-quarter. Trading and other income was at INR 2,215 crore during the quarter. Our overall revenue growth was healthy at 16%. We continue to invest across our distribution, digital, human capital, and marketing initiatives. We have added 256 branches during the quarter. We have also added 2,100 employees during the quarter and more than 11,000 employees in financial year 2024 across our distribution. As a result of our cost-to-income ratio have been on the higher side during the last few quarters. Our provisions were down 8% year-on-year and 2% quarter-on-quarter. Profit after tax grew at 15% to INR 2,349 crores for the quarter and 21% for the full year to INR 8,977 crores. EPS for the year was at 116 per share. We have a very well-diversified loan book across retail and corporates products. The loan book mix has moved in favor of retail during the year at 56%. Consumer businesses grew at 23% year-on-year and corporate book grew at 13% year-on-year. Now let me come to specific products and businesses. Our vehicle business. Our vehicle finance business grew 17% year-on-year with full-year disbursement crossing INR 50,000 crore for the first time in our history. We had another quarter of healthy disbursements at INR 11,963 crore. Disbursement growth picked up sequentially in the MHCV and construction equipment, whereas growth was sluggish in LCV, tractors, and passenger vehicles. During the quarter we have also completed migrations of around five million vehicle customers to Phoenix from the legacy system. This caused a couple of weeks of impact on business but it was a critical transition for us. Asset quality improved sequentially with gross slippages reducing to 0.57% versus 0.73% quarter-on-quarter in vehicle finance. The restructured book in vehicle finance reduced to INR 547 crore from INR 705 crore quarter-on-quarter with majority of the reduction coming due to upgrades and recoveries. Microfinance. We had another strong quarter of business at Bharat Financial with outstanding book loan originated of INR 44,750 crores growing at 10% quarter-on-quarter and 23% year-on-year. Both the microfinance as well as merchant acquiring business grew handsomely at 22% and 38% year-on-year respectively. Our microfinance loan disbursements were at INR 13,800 crores growing at 19% year-on-year. Microfinance gross slippages for Q4 reduced to INR 335 crores versus INR 363 crores quarter-on-quarter. The merchant acquiring business resumes its growth journey crossing INR 5,500 crore mark with 16% quarter-on-quarter growth. We now have 700,000 borrowing merchants onboarded. The diversification initiative is playing out well with merchant business now forming 13% of Bharat Financial originated book. Deposits mobilized through Bharat Financial stands at INR 2,912 crore and we have 18 million SaaS and RaaD accounts via Bharat Financial so far. Non-vehicle retail loans. Our retail assets contributed to the continued robust momentum with 9% quarter-on-quarter and 32% year-on-year growth. Our MSME book under business banking continued with strong traction with 21% year-on-year growth. New acquisitions have reached an all-time high during financial year 2024 driven by a reinforced focus via MSME 2.0 strategy. Majority of the MSME new acquisitions are granular and from less than INR two crore segment that is small business segment leveraging our digital lending platform. Our home loan books now stands at INR 1,792 crore growing 30% quarter-on-quarter. We have cautiously moderated sequential growth in unsecured products like credit cards and personal loans at 5% versus 9% quarter-on-quarter last quarter. Our credit card spends market share was at 4.9% as per last available RBI data. Overall scaling the other retail assets is one of the key focus areas of the bank and we aim to grow our other retail asset at faster pace while improving the balance towards secured mix. Corporate portfolio. Our corporate loan book grew 13% year-on-year. Within corporates, small corporates grew by 33% year-on-year. Mid-corporates excluding gems and jewelry business grew by 19% and large corporates grew by 13% year-on-year. Gems and jewelry book continued to see working capital reduction due to weak global demand. The overall asset quality of gems and jewelry book remains pristine with no NPA, SMA 1, and SMA 2. Corporate fees remain granular and diversified as we removed reliance on chunky sources of, like, investment banking and structured finance. The proportion of A and above rated customers is now 77% compared to 73% year-on-year. The weighted average rating is improved to 2.51 from 2.65 year-on-year. Overall we are growing our corporate book in a calibrated manner with focus on granularity and areas where we have right to win rather than chasing headline growth numbers. Deposit growth. The retail deposit momentum continued during the year with retail as per LCR growing at 18% year-on-year. As mentioned in the balance sheet release adjusted for outflows for deposits originated to a fintech partner our retail deposits growth was 20% year-on-year and 4% quarter-on-quarter. With a constant endeavor to bring forth innovative propositions we have recently launched contactless payment wearables Indus PayWear, India's first all-in-one tokenizable wearable for both debit and credit cards. Cost of deposit increased by modest four basis points quarter-on-quarter driven by mix in the form of in favor of term deposits and some repricing. We have added 256 branches during the quarter and 378 branches in financial year 2024. Our branch count stands now at 2,984. We maintain a healthy average surplus liquidity of around INR 39,400 crore during the quarter with liquidity coverage ratio of 118% versus 122% quarter-on-quarter. Overall we are making steady progress towards retail deposits retailization journey amidst the challenging liquidity environment and we'll take you through our initiatives in PC6 discussion. Digital business. Executing our digital 2.0 strategy. Our digital platforms continue to show robust growth. Direct-to-client platforms are scaling up with efficiency, creating a new tech-led business model. Overall, during the year, the bank acquired two million clients digitally in DIY mode, disbursed more than INR 1,000 crore of personal loans to new-to-bank clients acquired digitally, and acquired 250,000 cards digitally. While the business is going strongly, the business model also drives better business efficiency in line in the lines in which it operates. Indeed, the flagship digital platform for the individual segment is off to a strong start and completed six months of operations. We have five million installed base and 1.2 million clients on Indie. More than nine million transactions are processed every month on Indie platform, and transactions are doubling month on month. Yield and cost movement. Overall, margins continue to remain stable around our expected range. Loan mix moving in favor of retail loans provides the ability to absorb deposits repricing. Our fees is very granular and diversified and on the fee side. Core fee remains healthy growing at 6% quarter-on-quarter. Share of retail fees continues to be healthy at 72%. Overall fee remains steady at 1.9% of assets. Movement in non-performing assets. Our GNPA and NPA were steady quarter-on-quarter. We saw improvement in all the asset quality metrics such as gross and net slippages, restructured book, and security received during the quarter. All four business segments saw sequential improvement in slippages. Gross slippages reduced down to 0.44% versus 0.56% last quarter. Our restructured book continues to run down at 0.40% compared to 0.48% quarter-on-quarter. Our net SR book reduced to 0.34% of loan book versus 0.37% quarter-on-quarter. We have made INR 91 crore provisions for security receipt during this quarter. Our SMA 1 plus SMA 2 book was at 0.25% of the loan book. Our Q4 credit cost was at 111 basis points. We have closed financial year 2024 with full year credit cost of 113 basis points in line with the communication at the start of the financial year. Loan-related provisions. We continue to carry strong loan-related provisions. Our PCRs on GNPAs remain healthy at 71%. During the quarter we also saw full removal of the funded exposure towards a stressed ELCO of INR 990 crores. The bank had made a prudential contingent provision towards this account. The bank had retained large part of this provision in the contingent buffers. The contingent provisions of 1,000 crores provide cushion for any volatility in microfinance and customer vehicle segments. We aspire to keep 2% extra on microfinance and 0.5% extra on MHC portfolio as a buffer. Healthy capital adequacy. Our CET1 was at 15.82% and CRAR was at 17.23%. Our credit risk weight assets grew at 15% year-on-year and loan growth at 18% year-on-year. Sequential growth in RWAs is higher due to operational RWA in addition to in Q4. Capital utilization remains efficient with improved risk density and strong internal capital generation. Now let me take you to the Planning Cycle 6 progress. We completed first year of Planning Cycle 6 in March 2024 and the outcomes have been largely in line with our ambitions. We made steady progress across key themes of PC6 as seen in next few slides. We continue our retailization journey. We progressed towards our retailization journey with 73% of incremental deposits in last four years coming from retail as per LCR and CASA. Share of retail deposits is now 44% as compared to 31% in March 2020. We continue to invest in our distribution network and opened 378 branches during financial year 2024 and 1,073 branches in last four years. We believe our investment in the distribution should aid us in maintaining the growth momentum in retail deposits. We have lowered our dependency on bulk deposits and borrowings. Certificates of deposit remain low at 3% of deposit while borrowing contributes 9% of the total liabilities. Diversifying domains. Over the period the bank has diversified its vehicle finance book with addition and scale-up of new vehicle categories like light commercial vehicles, cars, utility vehicles, construction equipment, and tractors. We have gradually reduced dependency on MHCV segment which now contributes 6% of the overall loan book as compared to 11% during March 2018. We have revamped our LCV business by carving out a dedicated business unit. Banks' LCV market share has now crossed 10% from sub-5% a few years back. We have also scaled up passenger vehicle book improving balance between passenger and commercial vehicles. Overall vehicle portfolio is now diversified across product categories and the bank is well positioned for sustained growth across different product cycles. Our Bharat Financial. We continued our progress on the journey of transiting Bharat Financial's rural business from microfinance to microbanking. We have scaled up our merchant business via our Bharat Super Shop offering. The loan book has now crossed INR 5,500 crore across 7,000,000 nano retailers in Tier two and Tier three cities. The share of non-microfinance loan is now close to 13% of the overall loan source via Bharat Financial and we aspire to take it to 30% to 35% in the next two to three years. Our initiatives on the liability are also showing steady moving steadily and we now have close to 18 million SaaS and RaaD accounts opened via BFIL with deposits of more than INR 2,900 crore. The bank is adopting a one-bank approach to capture the entire ecosystem via community banking in the diamond business. We have launched Indus Solitaire, a community-based focused relationship program offering a gamut of tailored banking services for the diamond industry. While in the interim we have been cautiously slowed down on the growth amidst global demand challenges the asset quality of the book continues to remain pristine with zero NPA and zero SMA 1 and SMA 2. Scaling subscale businesses. We are scaling our new and existing initiatives across assets and liabilities. This is one of our key focuses on PC6. On the asset side our home loan book now is INR 1,792 crores while merchant advances via Bharat Financial are at INR 5,565 crores growing at 35% year-on-year. Our MSME initiatives have shown strong traction driven by staff focus via dedicated business units and best-in-class digital offerings. Overall loan book via our MSME focused business units grew at 26% year-on-year in financial year 2024. We continue to scale our existing liabilities initiatives for affluent and NRI banking. We further expand our affluent and NRI offering with the launch of private banking focused on HNI and ultra HNI customers. Accelerating Digital 2.0. We have laid a strong digital foundation with our progress on our Digital 2.0 strategy and created a strong stack of digital products and capabilities. Our recent launch of INDIE is showing healthy trends and user absorption of 5 million+ downloads and 1.2 million accounts around nine million transactions. We'll continue to integrate digital across our business with scale-up of existing initiatives and launch branch. We plan to launch INDIE for Business and INDIE for NRIs very shortly. Imbibing ESG into our businesses. The bank has deepened its impact on the society through responsible lending, mitigating climate change, and promoting social behavioral changes. We have launched multiple initiatives including ESG-linked products such as green deposits, sustainability-linked bonds, etc. IndusV, a platform for women entrepreneurs offering a holistic banking and non-banking services. IndusSolar, offering rooftop solar loans to MSME clients, fostering innovation in solar utilize energy utilization. ESG-oriented debt solutions for corporate for a corporate solutions for corporate banks. On track for our PC6 ambitions. Our financial year 2024 progress has been largely on track with our PC6 ambitions across parameters. We remain committed to achieving our planning cycle six goals. The key focus areas of financial year 2025 are: steadfast focus on retailization of deposits, navigating challenging environment, calibrating loan growth in sync with deposit growth, prioritizing diversification and granularity, integrating one-bank distribution structure to fully leverage a strong distribution across network segments, scaling new initiatives like home loans, MSME, affluent banking, NRI banking, etc., leapfrogging Digital 2.0 with planned launches and scale-up, relentless focus on compliance and governance, maintaining healthy profitability in top quartile of the industry. These are our key ratios and across key PA business parameters. We continue to show healthy traction across all our key metrics and expect to show similar trends going into financial year 2025 as well. We aim to grow ahead of the industry. We are committed to PC6 growth rates while being watchful of the operating environment quarter-on-quarter. We remain comfortable with our margins with some prudential upside when the interest cycle turns. We continue to invest in digital and other liability initiatives. The cost to income thus should be range-bound in the near term and improve as the operating leverage plays out in the few quarters. The asset quality is now in a steady state and any improvement would be used to build contingent buffers. Overall profitability of the franchise would thus be stable in the near term and improve as some of the benefits from margins and operating leverage play out over the course of next few quarters. Thank you and let me open the floor for question and answers now. Yup. We can take questions now. Good evening, sir. Yeah. Myself, Rohit from Market Memories. I have just two, three quick points and questions. First of all, sir, you mentioned you're new to credit. You have approximately lent new to credit. N2C, you have lent around INR 1,000 crore. And plus your, this sort of s. New to credit? No. No. To the digital platform on personal loans, we've lent INR 1,000 crore. 1,000. New to bank. To bank. New to bank. New to bank. Okay. Not new to credit. New to bank. New to bank. And microfinance also you have lent, so basically I want to know how do you take the credit score for people who are the borrowers of how do you judge the credit score of the borrowers who are availing of these loans in microfinance? So there is a process which we use for the microfinance loans, which is the household income debt servicing ratio and his performance in the credit bureau. Okay? And based is that we decide this is the household income debt servicing ratio and his track records and computer score. This is which we give the customer the loan. The average loan in cycle one which is given to a new client is absolutely low amount which is INR 25,000 and then we take him up the value chain as we go. And suppose if he is unbanked, he doesn't have any banking facilities or banking track. We only disburse through the bank account. We don't disburse anything to non-bank customers. We don't do cash disbursals. You said you have 2,984 branches pan-India. So how many are in the rural areas like? 25 as per the regulator, 25% to 30% branches are in the rural areas. Thank you. But we have a different distribution outlet in the rural because of the bank Bharat Banking BC outlets. We also have another 6,000 6,792 outlets across pan-India including IMFS as well as Bharat Financial outlets. So we have an inordinately large distribution. Thank you. Yeah. Sir, Ramesh Bhojwani from Mehta and Vakil. First and foremost, many congratulations on excellent set of numbers and a beautiful presentation. You have given an all-encompassing account of all your four verticals. It's so heartening to see the asset quality not only is under control but it has improved and going forward it will still improve is what you indicated in your, I can say not only verbal but even the body language. Sir, only thing which comes to my mind is I think the best in the banking industry cycle is it likely to continue for a year more or are we now going to see somewhere some weakening or some sectors or some segments of the economy or industry showing, you know, symptoms or signs of weakness? I think you can look at a glass half empty or half full. Yeah. I think, if the economy has to grow at 8%, 7% to 8%, I think the credit quality of the economy will continue to be well. I continue to believe that, these are the golden ages times for the Indian economy. Yeah. We will continue to do well in the Indian economy. I think if the economy has to do well and has to become a $5 trillion economy, banking sector has to do well. I think for banking sector to do well, the credit quality has to remain very good. Absolutely. But, sir, the looking at the macro picture on the geopolitical front, today globally there are three wars which are being fought. And if these don't get contained or cease-fire, they may catapult into a World War III kind of a situation. I can't comment on the geopolitical. I can only say that we have to be watchful. Yeah. Of the inflation because we get impacted on inflation if the oil prices go up. Yes. We have to be impacted by the rate as a consequence. We are very watchful while we maintain a growth rate of 18% to 22% but we are very watchful of the external environment and we'll continue to evaluate quarter-on-quarter what the external environment is. Yeah. That is where we are convinced that we should be able to maintain the portfolio quality. Last thing is, I personally believe that the microfinance industry in India is of a size of at least INR 300,000 crore if not more. INR 3,90,000 crore. Yes. And you are moving microfinance to microbanking. You also added that extended that statement even to my colleague here. But any specific strategy or focus or a concentrated move to double this microfinance book in the coming four year? I, I think you have to do a balanced growth at any point of time. You have to understand what should be the contribution of each portfolio and each segment in your overall book. Yeah. We believe a microfinance book should be not more than 11% to 12% of your book and that's what our strategy is. And you, you doesn't mean that rural should be 12%. Yeah. You diversify into other products which are secured in nature and have cash flows which are of a very different nature. So it doesn't stop the growth but what you do is diversification of your portfolio and a cohesive strategy is very important to grow in that segment. Thank you, sir, and all the best. Thank you. Yeah. Hi, sir. Hi. This is Jai Mundra from ICICI Securities. A few questions. First on loan growth, right? So you mentioned I mean, in our PC cycle we have been saying 18% to 23% loan growth and we have delivered that in the, you know, a bit of a challenging environment. But going ahead, I mean, the constraint on funding still seems to be, you know, still there. So this 18% loan growth guidance, I mean, is still relevant even in the period where, you know, deposit mobilization may be under a bit of a constraint? So like I said, there is no reason for us to change our guidance right now. We continue to believe that the bank should grow at 18% to 22% because we operate in those segments otherwise we lose market share and we play in businesses where we have a right to win. That's number one. Number two, in my opinion, I think, you know, this liquidity issue, I think, is about cost of deposits and not a liquidity issue. And I think people, you know, as long as you continue to create the right mix of assets, liquidity is not an issue and you can manage your book. Don't worry about CASA ratios and liquidity. As long as your liquidity is matching your asset growth and if you are able to do 16% to 18% growth, you will be able to grow at 18% to 22% given that our portfolio lend themselves to refinance and a lot of that funding can also come from refinance as a consequence of our growth. So we don't see an issue in our growth because we have refinance as an option in the borrowing where we have a tap out there and we also believe that our liability growth will touch 16% to 18% this year and we should be able to match that growth. Sure. And, sir, I within this, growth question, you know, we have given additional detail on vehicle portfolio that the way that we are diversifying, right? What is your sense of the vehicle book, growth in FY25? Because at system level, the overall industry, CV, etc., seems to be, you know, One of the reasons why we diversified. If you look at it, the CV book has not grown and it's slowed down but our growth has been 17% in a very tough environment also. We continue to believe that our vehicle finance growth will go at 18% to 20% next year because of the diversification which we've done in our book. And it's not dependent on a singular product like MHCV coming in. It's a full diversification. Passenger vehicles are doing well. Tractors will come back. It's not done well last year. It's going to come back this year. We expect a very good monsoon. And I think, we have enough levers in our vehicle finance unit to make sure that we deliver an 18% to20% growth. Right. And lastly, I mean, the last two questions. One is, it looks like the cost of deposit has only grown by four basis points but the cost of funds have grown, I mean, has increased by double digits. Right? I think why? I think, we had a scenario where one fintech partner which we had INR 4,000 crore of liabilities in fixed individual fixed deposits went off at a certain point. We have a strong view that we should not reduce our LCR below 115% at any point of time. We at that point did external borrowings and I think foreign currency long-term borrowings and we had a cost which was associated with it. I think it's a matter of prudence that we did it and it was very important to manage it at that point. We still are able to maintain our net interest margins at 4%. But this is the ability of this bank to manage its NIMS where people thought our NIMS will be 4.15% or 4.2%. We still come at that NIMS because our ability and our portfolio's capability to diversify so fast. Basically, you see the borrowings number. The borrowings number has gone up by INR 7,000 crores. So that will add up to that. Right. And, if you can suggest that this other loans, right, that this has become like INR 25,000 crore. Yes. If you can. So INR 5,500 crore and that is coming out of microfinance, merchant acquiring loans. The balance comes out of, I'll give you the details. Yeah. So affordable housing is about INR 1,988 crore. KCC is INR 2,966 crore. Home loans is INR 1,792 crore and others which include BL, LAS, gold loans is about INR 5,123 crore. I thought the number was INR 25,000 crore in total, right? That's the others. The other is included, given in most of the presentation. Okay. Sure. Sure. Okay. Yeah. And so, sir, if I may ask from a two-year perspective, do you think you have cushion on, let's say, margins upward, you know, upward cushion on margins, OPEX, credit cost, and all these three line item? So very difficult to comment as of now. We've set and given a direction on the ROA. See, what you should look at is the ROA. We've given 1.8 to 2.2. That's the end, you know, whatever we do. We are right on our dot. On year one, we are at 1.9. I think, you should only see positive movements. You've never said that, and positive movement happens if there is a margin improvement which. So So our cost to income is highly inflated as of now because we've invested in new businesses but we've still been able to maintain our margins. Thank you and all the best, sir. Yeah. Yeah. Hi, sir. This is Pratik Chheda from Guardian Capital. Just taking forward on the point on the deposits, I mean, this quarter across the industry, deposit growth has been strong on a QOQ basis which was a slight positive surprise. So just wanted to understand whether this is more a temporary thing or do you see the deposit mobilization now sort of picking up and how have been the early indicators? I mean, see, you are almost a month into the. Deposits is not the issue. Please understand. Liquidity is not the issue anymore. It is about the cost of deposits. And that is what the issue is. And as long as you know how to manage the cost of deposits and how you manage borrowing, cost of deposit, and cost of funds, you will get your numbers. So please understand, you know, I think we are making more of what it is. I think as long as you do granular growth on deposits, you have a healthy mix of borrowings into it, I think, achieving that growth. And we are a small bank so we are not such a bank that we have INR 10,00,000 crore of deposits. For us to do 18% to 22% means only INR 15,000 to 6,000 crore a quarter, yeah. So there is nothing much to it. Incrementally, the borrowings have gone up around 18%. Can you just share what is the cost of borrowing for these additional borrowings that have come in the Q4? They've been less than the cost of deposits. Less than the cost of deposits. Sure. But yeah, overall, the cost of funds will go up because yet if they are over the cost of funds which was 5.31 or 5.4 earlier, obviously, it will go up. Okay. Thanks. Yep. Hi, Darpin Shah. So, you know, you had mentioned earlier also that, you know, you won't use additional provisions. So have you utilized anything this quarter? Yes, we have. INR 300 crore. Okay. And was the plan for the remaining Vodafone provisions? See, I have said in my presentation that we will keep 1.5% to 2% of microfinance book which is the JLG book and 0.5% on the MHCV book always as contingency buffers. So we are well much within that and we will continue to keep that buffers as we go. So we will continue to add or delete basis on need. So it's not that, we are going slow or high. We will continue to create a contingent buffer to take care of any volatility in our earnings. Okay. Thank you. We've always said our earnings profile will be very stable, very annuity-driven, and that is what you will see of our earnings profile. Sir, in terms of your cost of deposits or cost of funds, how much more increase you expect for next couple of quarters or more so the repricing is done? Very difficult to project right now. I think we look at it, over a period of time. I think it's also not good to have very long-term deposits right now. So we are seeing when the rate change happens and what is the cyclical. So we are managing our book right now. So I think, as long as we maintain our NIMS between 4.2% to 4.3% and maintain our ROAs between 1.8% to 2.2%, that is the number we give our guidance. We don't give our guidance on every parameter because that is for us to manage our businesses but we want to give returns which are consistent and we've said that is what our NIMS is, guidance is, and that is what our ROA guidance is. Thanks. Thanks, sir. Yeah. Hi, sir. So, my. Just take a mic. You're very far. Sure. Thank you, sir. Yeah. So, my, I have two questions. My first question was on the Reliance Capital and mutual fund business by the Hold Co, right? It's part of the Hold Co. But do you foresee any pressure going ahead from RBI to, you know, just have one bank, one company? We don't, we've not got a license so we don't have one bank, one company approach. Hold Co can have multiple companies but bank is an independent entity governed by the Banking Regulation Act. So I think, we don't have any pressure as such that we got to take a stake or not take a stake. We've not invested anything in that company so we can't even comment on it. All right. And, sir, any clarity on promoter stake? Means promoter increasing stake? See, it depends. It's between the promoter and the regulator. Whatever information we are asked, if we are asked by the promoter by the regulator, we respond. I don't think there's been any such information which we've been asked in the recent times. I think it's between the promoter. It'd be very difficult for us to make any statements around that. Got it, sir. Sir, and my last question is on the MFI business. So it's doing well. You said that, you know, it'll move up to the high teens. It's moved up to 20% year-on-year from a lowish growth earlier. So, where do you see the growth settling for the next one to two years? And, just in terms of asset quality of MFI, of course, your exposure in Punjab, Haryana is small so it's good. But any such asset quality stresses you foresee in the future? First of all, I want to give you the comfort that MFI book which is in the JLG while the MFI book may grow at 20%, 21%, 25% also, it's not that we will only grow in JLG. That diversification is very important in our portfolio and that's what we've done. We continue to maintain 9.5% and 10% market share on that business and that is what our market share will be and it'll not be more than 11% to 13% of our portfolio. That's the number two statement I want to make. Number three statement I want to make is, yes, we saw Punjab coming 11 months ago. We saw the waves of Punjab coming and even some parts of Odisha and Bihar also coming and some parts of UP. We started exiting those portfolios at that point. That's why our exposures are very, very low. We did not restructure any of these assets and we wanted to take them as losses if there are any. We'd continuously believe these small-ticket loans should never be restructured. We should rather take them as losses and move forward. Got it, sir. Thank you. Yeah. Hi, sir. Yeah. Hi. Hi. Hi, sir. So a couple of questions. Firstly, it's on the slippages. While there has been an improvement in slippage rate this quarter versus the last quarter but how do you really see this? Because consumer slippages still looks a tad higher. So where, where would you see them in FY25? Any color around that? So our slippages are in the consumer side. It's absolutely under control. It's only in credit card where we see a little bit of an elevated slippages. And I think, we write off the credit card portfolio very early also. So I think the slippages are coming in the credit card side which we now think has stabilized. So it will now see a stable flow and then it will see a declining flow. So we are not seeing fresh NPL inflows into the 30+ bucket but I think the outflows have to happen because the resolution rates in the 30+ buckets are a little bit low at that level in this. So I think you should start seeing in two quarters' time credit card flows coming down. As a consequence, you will start seeing the slippages going down in the retail side of the portfolio also. Okay. And, secondly, on the additional provisions that you plan to make in MFI and MHCV, so see, last two quarters, we have been only consuming provisions from contingent. So and by when do you see that bank will be in a position to start making those provisions? See, if you can't give guidance on this. It depends on the opportunity and the stability of the flows which I want to see. And I think my books are very stable right now. I think I carry enough contingent provision to manage any market volatility. If I feel that my market volatility is a little higher, I will start making contingent provision. Or my microfinance books touch a certain level and I think that it's that INR 1,000 crore provision is not enough to take care of that, I will make the provision immediately. I've made a commitment that I'll make that 2% and 0.5% of the MHCV. I will add to that, and maybe I'll start demonstrating to you that what I carry as the provision from next quarter onward, so that you're comfortable that the bank carries enough provision to take care of any volatility in the these two books. The volatility comes in these two books only. Right. And my last question is on the corporate banking yield. Now, this quarter, there was a slight drop there and, our focus, all through has been more on the mid-corporate and small-corporate in terms of growing that book. And, so how do you really see that and what explains this drop this quarter? So we continue to believe large corporates are a very important part of our business. Neeraj Shah runs this business for us. I think, we do very specific segments in that and we focus on very specific deals in that. We also focus on that segment because we get our risk-weighted assets as a consequence of that. So we do it at a time when we need risk-weighted assets and we see how to balance the risk-weighted assets. If you see a CET1 ratio and you see the decline, we've, you know, we've matured the AT1 bonds and I think, 40 basis points impact but we've still not, we've lost the CET1 by 20 basis points because and we had an operational risk also because we had to do a provision. Still, because our CET1, our A-rated paper and above went up, and that is what large corporates does to me. So we balance our books very, very well and that is what it is. We will grow large corporates in line with our system growth, not higher than the system growth but I think it's part of our strategy, it's a very important piece of our business. And we believe though we may not make that much of money, it helps in our capital, m allocation and we believe that its preservation of capital is very important and that's why we've not gone to the market for the last four years to raise capital. Right. Yeah. Sure. Thanks. Thanks so much, so much. Yeah. Hi, sir. Here. Yeah. Just wanted to understand from you on the status about the Vodafone recovery account. So we got our recovery on 8 February. The full loan was repaid. We told you last time, last quarter, that we'll get this recovery. We got the recovery on 8 February. 8 Feb ruary was the date. Got it. Thank you, sir. Yeah. Hi, Sumant. This is Anand from Emkay. Can you just talk about how the funding cost curve is moving? Do you think that basically it has largely peaked or possibly it's gonna peak in one or quarter one or two quarters? Number one. Number two is that, particularly in terms of lending rate, basically, you run a lot of fixed-rate book as such. Do you see any scope of increasing lending rates, particularly into any products? In case of microfinance, a lot of the NBFC microfinance were actually asked to reduce the rates as such. Any such case for us, number one? Number two, in case of MHCV, and other, you know, vehicle loan products or the affordable housing loan products as such, have you increased the lending rates in the recent past? Not at all. I don't believe that you can, at the bottom of the pyramid, start increasing rates because the opportunity represents to do that rate. It's you have to look at this business in totality rather than as individual vectors. And I think if you increase the rates, the ability of the pay the intent may be there but the ability to pay reduces and that's not fair. In my opinion, while it may you may say it's INR 10, INR 20 per month, it's not the right way to do our business. In my opinion, that's our rates remain at 21, 21, 21% and we don't want to do anything which is, contrary to that. We don't want to offer rates at 28, 26, 28%. That's not right on the microfinance side. If you ask me on the funding side, I think the gap, as long as there is a gap between the savings account rate and the fixed deposit rates, I think there will be a COD shift which will happen. It may be three to four basis points but it will happen because you can't tell a client to keep money in savings account and then have the, you know and not keep it in the term deposits. And I think that's happening in the industry. Second, I think midsize banks like us and even the large private sector, I think the current account growth will get subdued because with the 10% regulation which has come in, a lot of banks in private sector banks will not have 10% exposure to large corporates. I think whatever money you may get, you can only keep for two days or three days, which is the cash management of the. And you can't, and the special purpose accounts are far and few. So I think, there is a lot of money which banks used to get as transaction banking floats which have disappeared. So that's where the cost of deposits have gone up in the banking industry. And I think, you should not worry about that as long as margins are maintained between 4.2 to 4.3 and banks manage the risk in a diversified manner. I think that's the new mantra. And I understand that that's the way we are managing our mantra. And I think, while CASA ratio is important, our CASA ratio has reduced from 44% to 38% in six quarters. But again, our NIMs have remained very stable. So basically, what could be the levers to, you know, maintain the NIMs basically where we are, at this point of time? Basically, if you don't increase the lending rates, your cost of funds tends to go up. I think. So how do you manage that? Is there basically any scope in terms of LDR? So you must look at cost of fund. The difference between cost of deposit and cost of fund in our case, well, in other cases, is 15 basis points. In our case, it's almost 100 to 120 basis points. Understand why that cost of difference comes in. That's number one. Number two, I think, the mix change in the business, our ability to change the mix and every change of mix between corporate and retail gives us about 550 to 600 basis points incremental yield. That is very important for us as we manage our business as we go forward. And I think those are the important parameters for us to manage our business. Sure. Secondly, on your, you know, OpEx basically, from the industry perspective as well as industry and bank perspective, you know, we believe that certainly, branch expansion, is bound to happen across banks. I think you are also focusing on that front because you want to mobilize the retail deposit. How do you see your and basically the industry cost structure moving up from here, be it investment into the branches, be it investment into people, technology, all these platforms? So I'll tell you, you have to understand where the costs are coming from. That's very important. One is people cost. And I think retention of people has become more important. And I think, with all banks expanding, the way they are expanding, I think people cost have risen. And we must accept that. No more can you say that I will give a 5% increment and try to retain people. I think the cost of people have risen and it's an acknowledged fact which has happened in the industry. And I think, that's, something which we need to and of course, 30%-35% of attrition also raises another cost issue which comes in as a consequence of that. That's one. Number two, the cost of technology has risen. If you want to be ahead of the curve, you've got to invest in technology and at a very fast pace. I, I think the technology costs have started showing an increasing trend and it's showing for the last two years and continuously showing an increasing trend. Number three, I think payments, business cost has gone up to a large extent, specifically on the UPI side and the and I think those costs are increasing. Even if your account is debited, you're paying to the wallets. At the end, people don't use you as a wallet. They, they move the funds from your account to a Google Pay and then you pay the Google Pay or the aggregator payment service provider. You are actually paying to UPI and payment. That That cost is increasing at a very fast pace for the banks. That's number three. Number four is the branch expansion. Number five is when you get into digital, initial phases of first one year, 1.5 years, 12 to 18 months, you will have costs which come in. Now, you can stop that initiative but I think you're contradicting yourself and spoiling the growth of the future of the organization because I think branches are required because relationships belong to branches. But digital is required because transactions are enabled through digital. And you need both complementing each other. And I think that's where the costs are happening. So, you know, recently, basically, RBI has been very active and, you know, putting a lot of punitive action taking, particularly in terms of IT systems as such. So what's your broad view? I mean, not talking about any particular player but broadly in terms of industry and how basically industry and banks tackle that. Do you see any kind of that risk coming in for industry and bank ever from the regulator? I cannot comment on the regulator's behalf. So let me tell you, nobody can comment. I'm lucky that I've not got the punitive action. But my onsite audit, if that's the indication, does not reflect that I have any such issues. So that's because we invest in technology before we scale up business. So even digital, we've not scaled up to a large extent because we want to keep on testing our technology and the infrastructure before we scale up anything. So I think we are very, very cautious about that. I think, as you grow this business and if you think that the volumes and scaling up of volumes and payments is happening, how you define infrastructure and your architecture of the technology is very important. I think people, it's the traditional models are not going to work in this in this infrastructure. Real-time DR, multiple switches, you know, how do you create that capability in the systems and capable UI/UX? How do you how do you have online real-time systems to trace when the when there is a constraint or a stoppage on the system or something is happening? So, you know, efficient tools, efficient monitoring capability, efficient change management system, efficient architecture, it's a very different tech-related stuff which has to happen and we've invested in that. So why that's why our technology costs have gone up the way and our efficiency is what it is because we invested because I know that it will pay back to us in a long, long-term basis. But I think that's investments which you have to do if you have to survive. Now, can I say whether we'll get a penalty or no? I don't know or whether we'll get a punitive action. I can't judge for the regulator. Sure. Lastly, if you can just talk about your tech expenses as a percentage of overall OPEX and as well as the, you know, the branch cost broadly? I didn't get your question. The branch cost as well as the tech cost as a percentage of your OPEX, if you can talk about it? So tech will be so it's about 9.5% of the tech cost. Tech cost. Tech cost. And how much of. The branch expenses, I think, I can talk about consumer bank as a whole. You know, okay, I can take out the asset piece out of it, because asset is more. So about 18% to 20% of my expense, 22% of my expense will be the branch expense. Basically, physical techs have somewhere about 30-odd% of the overall OpEx. That has gone up in the recent years or like? It does go up because the people's cost is going up. It's not some cost has come in. The variable cost is only the people cost. Right. The attrition rates this year, has come down versus the last year in broader terms? Zubin is here. He can talk. I think, to give you a comfort, yes, we are down from 51% to mid-30s. Zubin can talk about it. Great. Great. Get the mic here. So I think Sumant already shared the numbers. Last year, the year before that, was a tough year for the entire industry. And you already had reports of our attrition pushing the 50% mark, crossed it to 51%. But a lot of initiatives and activities were implemented last year in terms of you know understanding why people are leaving. There was a huge boom where people wanted to leave for fintech just like the dot-com in 2000. And I think it was at that point in time, I think we told you know we said that you can't stop these people from going. Holding back people at 40% to 45% hikes was not making sense. The payroll cost would have catapulted geometrically. But the last year has been good for not only us. We've I think come right down to the bottom of the list of attrition now, fortunately. It's close, just, just upwards of 35%, below 36%. And how that plays out is that it helps bring the cost down. So the cost of manpower that you're seeing, which you see is slightly elevated in the past year, is the replacement cost for the 51% of the previous year. So there's a lead-lag effect that needs to play out when you're hiring. As we go forward, so let me put it this way, Sumant, give you some numbers on the number of people we hired. Our cost for hiring is between 8% to 9% hike year-on-year on our salary, sorry. Cost for hiring is around 19% year-on-year, 18% to 20% year-on-year. Replacement cost last year, which was the highest we've ever seen because of the attrition the previous year, was pushing 8.5%. You'll start seeing that going down. So actually, holding back people always makes a lot of sense, not just from the fact that you lose or you don't lose trained resources, but the replacement cost, given in the market, as Sumant said, you know, we used to take targets. I used to give my team targets that you're not going to hire anybody above an average of 7.5% to 8%. Those days are gone. The kids and others who come over here expect 30% to 40%. We start with 15, come down lower. So I think the market is finding its levels. And we should see standard, stabilized attrition between 28% to 32% for the industry as such. Yeah. Congrats. Really good to hear. I'm sure you're going to take special bonus this year. No. The yeah. Well. Yeah. Thank you, Sumant. But, Sumant, just, you know, last thing, basically, you have ticked almost all the boxes that, you know, one would expect it to be. The only slight disappointment or basically, you know, ask that we have for next year is that, if you can, you know, shore up your contingent buffer, I don't know where from you find profits, maybe from treasury gains or something like that. But, maybe, but certainly, I think we would want you to build up your contingent buffers. I've always told you, if we need one, we will definitely shore it up as long as the contingent buffers takes 1.5% to 2% of the microfinance, JLG book, and MHCV. And if there's a shortfall, we will demonstrate it clearly on the next quarter onward. What is the shortfall? We'll definitely add that to the contingent if there is a release to be done, we will release. But I'm assuring you, we will never be short of this number. Sure. Thanks. Thanks, Arun. We can, we can cut for tea and I'm there. We can ask any questions if you want. The management team is also here. I wanted the management team once a year to be introduced to the investors. You can ask any questions in the in the spirit of transparency that whatever we've said. And I think that will give you the comfort of what we are doing. Thank you so much.