South Indian Bank on Thursday reported a 22.59 per cent increase in its March quarter net profit at Rs 333.53 crore, helped by a boost from the core income. The private sector lender's net profit for the fiscal year 2022-23 came at Rs 775.31 crore, as against Rs 44.82 crore in the year-ago period.
In the reporting quarter, its core net interest income increased 34 per cent to Rs 857 crore on the back of a 17 per cent advances growth and a 0.17 per cent widening in the net interest margin to 3.67 per cent.
Its outgoing managing director and chief executive Murali Ramakrishnan said the bank will be targeting a loan growth of 12 per cent, which is twice the rate of real GDP growth, and will try to expand the NIM for FY24 to 3.5 per cent from the 3.3 per cent for FY22.
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Its other income rose to Rs 344 crore in the reporting quarter, up from Rs 203.85 crore in the year-ago period.
On the asset quality front, Ramakrishnan said fresh slippages reduced to Rs 343 crore, with a bulk of them coming from the retail advances. The gross non-performing assets ratio improved to 5.14 per cent from 5.90 per cent in the year-ago period and 5.48 per cent at the end of December. Ramakrishnan said the bank witnessed high growth in its unsecured portfolio and would like to grow its home loan business in FY24.
It went slow on the deposit accretion as a conscious call, resulting in only 5.36 per cent growth on this aspect in FY23, he said.
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The bank has shortlisted a few candidates to replace Ramakrishnan, who is desirous of not having a second term, and will be recommending names to the RBI before the deadline of four months before September, its chairman Salim Gangadharan told reporters.
He also refuted news reports of the bank board being unhappy at Ramakrishnan, and added that the search process had to be started because the incumbent CEO did not wish to have a second term.
The bank's overall capital adequacy stood at a comfortable 17.25 per cent and Ramakrishnan said it does not have any immediate plans of augmenting the buffers.
The South Indian Bank scrip closed 1.37 per cent up at Rs 16.31 apiece on the BSE on Thursday, as against a 0.06 per cent correction on the benchmark.
