Padmaja Reddy questions collection efficiency of Spandana Sphoorty in Q2

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Padmaja Reddy, founder and former Managing Director of Spandana Sphoorty Financial, has questioned the collection efficiency figures for the second quarter of the fiscal and has claimed that no loans have been disbursed by the microfinance player in November.

Spandana had reported standalone collection efficiency for the quarter ended September 30, at 105 per cent and 113 per cent for the month of September, including pre-payments. Excluding these, the standalone collection efficiency was 97 per cent for the entire quarter and 99 per cent for the month, respectively.

Former Spandana MD Padmaja Reddy questions high salary being paid to new MD and CEO

However, Reddy said the actual collection efficiency, excluding overdue collections (funded by new loan disbursements), even after not considering the demand of 22.6 per cent of the loans restructured, was 92.5 per cent and 92.4 per cent for the second quarter and the month of September, respectively.

“If the demand of restructured loans is considered, collection efficiency for the quarter was 75.7 per cent,” she said.

The company had restructured 5.2 lakh borrower accounts with an outstanding of ₹1,602 crore till September 30, she further said.

Noting that no loans have been disbursed from November 1 till date, Reddy said that if the situation prevails, the collection efficiency, which is less than 80 per cent in November would get further impacted.

She also said processing of insurance claims too has come to standstill.

“We get approximately 3,000 insurance claims a month. Not even a single insurance claim has been sent to the insurance company since November 2,” she said.

Spandana’s response

In response to an e-mail query from BusinessLine, the board of Spandana Sphoorty said it is working diligently to ensure a smooth transition that will continue to build on a fundamentally strong business.

“The board is in touch with all stakeholders to address any concerns. It is unfortunate that Reddy, who resigned as MD on November 2, and continues to be a director, is issuing such communications. While it is possible to assume she is disgruntled at her term as MD not being extended from May when her current employment contract expires, her resigning immediately on being told about the board’s decision not to renew her employment agreement, and then making such statements is, in the company’s opinion, uncalled for and potentially harmful to the company she has built over the past nearly 20 years,” it further said.

It also stressed that one individual’s comments cannot undermine the board’s fiduciary responsibility to all stakeholders.

“If Reddy was really concerned about the company and its future, she as a board member has the ability to constructively participate in all strategic discussions. Unfortunately, she is not doing so in the recent past,” it further said.

The micro finance company is yet to announce its second quarter results, but expects to do so shortly.

Healthy performance

In a business update on November 22, Spandana had said the company has demonstrated healthy performance in the quarter that ended September 30.

“For the partial month of November, till November 16, the company collected approximately ₹400 crore (standalone basis), which includes approximately ₹30 crore of advance collections done at the end of October related to loan instalments due in November,” it had said.

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Tech and digital will be major enablers for our business: Poonawalla Fincorp

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Poonawalla Fincorp believes tech and digital will be key enablers for its business and it is looking at providing end-to-end digital journey to its customers. In an interview with BusinessLine, Vijay Deshwal, Group Chief Executive Officer, Poonawalla Fincorp, spoke about the company’s strategy since the deal with Magma and how it plans to diversify products and rationalise branches. Excerpts:

How has the business been operating since the Magma deal?

The last four to five months have been a phase of consolidation and transformation, where we realigned our business mix towards highly scalable products, targeting formal credit-tested borrowers with increasing play on salaried and professional individuals. We have a very highly ambitious plan of growing with a focus on generating operating profits and keeping credit costs well within predefined limits. To achieve this, we have identified five core operating levers — brand and equity capital coupled with our cost of funds. We have already achieved a significant repricing of our existing debt and raising fresh debt at very fine rates. The third lever is a very strong senior leadership team; the fourth lever is our distribution and collection infrastructure and the fifth lever will be our digital strategy.

What will be your digital strategy?

We will look at tech and digital as major enablers for doing business. For each one of the businesses, our ambition will be that we have an end-to-end digital journey for our customers. We will use analytics as a very potent tool for sourcing, credit underwriting and risk monitoring. We will focus on the credit costs, right from the time of onboarding of customers and maintain them within the predefined parameters.

What are the products that you are diversifying into?

We have rolled out personal loans and loans to professional business. We have started SME loans against property last month.

The small ticket LAP will be rolled out in the next quarter. Co lending and fintech partnerships are on. Pre-owned car finance is also there and we have a very good affordable home loans franchise. These will be our focus segments. We are also at the advanced stages of launching medical equipment loan franchise, small ticket loan against property, and a few co-lending and fintech partnerships.

Apart from the pre-owned car finance partnership with CARS24, are you looking at such partnerships for other product lines?

We have been into pre-owned car finance.

However, tech and digital are at the front of all our value propositions and which not only offers frictionless delivery of financial services but also reduces the cost of acquisition and opex. Fintechs are playing a complementary role in the financial supply chains. In addition to our physical distribution infrastructure, which we already have in place for pre-owned car finance and other products, we are actively looking at harnessing such partnership ecosystems.

What about branch expansion?

We inherited 290 branches. We are looking at branch rationalisation rather than branch increase or branch decrease.

Some branches will be shut where the product focus is not there or those which have not been profitable. We are looking at strengthening our presence in some markets like Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Gujarat where our branch penetration was not so adequate.

The overall business outlook seems to be very encouraging if we look at all the high frequency indicators like GST collections, the commercial vehicle sales and the push for online payments. We believe that we are up for a good business cycle in the coming years. The recent few months have also provided a huge amount of market opportunity across the products that we have identified and our business also has been responding quite well to these market opportunities.

Is stress on your books a concern?

Not at all. We took a few prudent measures at the beginning of this financial year where we revised our write-off policies more to actually align with the real credit costs that the product lines bring and also took prudent management provisions to take care of any unforeseen events. We don’t see any sort of negative surprises in the near to long term.

Are you looking at further capital raise?

We received very large capital infusion by way of this (Magma) transaction. We are not looking at a capital raise at least for the next three to four years. We are sufficiently capitalised to grow our businesses in the near term.

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Poonawalla Fincorp, CARS24 in strategic pact for consumer financing

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Poonawalla Fincorp and CARS24 on Monday announced their strategic partnership for quick and seamless consumer financing on vehicles bought from CARS24.

CARS24 raises $450 million funding in Series F round

“In this partnership, Poonawalla Fincorp will fulfil consumer loans originating through CARS24. Additionally, both parties will partake in the risk and rewards,” they said in a statement.

‘Huge market opportunity’

Vijay Deshwal, Group Chief Executive officer, Poonawalla Fincorp Ltd, said, “With technology at its core, we at Poonawalla Fincorp aim to create a digitally-enabled consumer lending platform and this partnership with CARS24 is a step in that direction. We are optimistic that this will be a great partnership and will provide hassle-free experience to customers in fulfilling their dream of owning a car.”

Cars24 eyes 20% share of the used car market in 5 years

Ruchit Agarwal, Co-founder and CFO, CARS24, said, “With only 20 per cent consumer financing penetration in the used cars industry, we feel that there is a huge market opportunity waiting to be tapped.”

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Yes Bank invokes pledged shares of Asian Hotels (North) Ltd, BFSI News, ET BFSI

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Yes Bank has acquired over 7 per cent stake in Asian Hotels (North) Ltd after invoking pledged shares as the company defaulted on loan repayments. In a regulatory filing on Friday, the lender said it has acquired 14,02,991 equity shares by way of invocation of pledge, constituting 7.21 per cent of the issue paid-up share capital of Asian Hotels (North) Ltd.

“Shares have been acquired pursuant to invocation of pledge of shares of borrower subsequent to default/breach of terms of credit facilities sanctioned by the bank to the borrower,” Yes Bank said.

The bank said the proceeds from the sale of shares will be utilised to reduce the loan secured by such shares.

Asian Hotels (North), which is into the hospitality sector, had a turnover of Rs 72.58 crore as on March 31, 2021.



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Bank of India standalone net profit almost doubles to ₹1,051 cr in Q2

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Bank of India’s standalone net profit almost doubled to ₹1,051 crore in the second quarter against ₹526 crore in the year ago period on the back of robust growth in other income and a steep decline in loan loss provisions.

During the reporting quarter, there was a reduction in gross non-performing assets (GNPAs) aggregating ₹5,771.50 crore.

NPA position of Indian Banks indicates gradual improvement: CARE Ratings

The Mumbai-headquartered public sector bank’s net interest income (difference between interest earned and interest expended) declined 14 per cent year-on-year (yoy) to ₹3,523 crore (₹4,113 crore in the year ago quarter).

Other income, including profit/loss on sale of assets, profit/loss on revaluation of investments (net), earnings from foreign exchange and derivative transactions, recoveries from accounts previously written off, dividend income, etc., jumped 59 per cent yoy to ₹2,136 crore (₹1,346 crore).

To ease lending, FinMin moves to boost bankers’ morale, growth

GNPA position improved to 12 per cent of gross advances as at September-end 2021 against 13.51 per cent in the preceding quarter.

NPA position

Net NPAs position too improved to 2.79 per cent of net advances against 3.35 per cent in the preceding quarter.

Total deposits edged up by about one per cent yoy to ₹6,12,961 crore. Total advances were up about 5 per cent yoy to ₹3,78,727 crore.

On a consolidated basis, including the results of four domestic subsidiaries, four overseas subsidiaries, one joint venture and six associates, BoI reported a 97 per cent jump in net profit at ₹1,073 crore (₹543 crore).

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SBI launches pre-approved two-wheeler loan scheme ‘SBI Easy Ride’

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State Bank of India (SBI) has launched a pre-approved two-wheeler loan scheme ‘SBI Easy Ride’ through its digital banking platform YONO.

Eligible SBI customers can avail of two-wheeler loans, up to 85 per cent of on-road price subject to eligibility, through the YONO app without visiting the bank branch.

Customers can apply for the Easy Ride loan for an amount up to ₹3 lakh at an interest rate of 10.5 per cent per annum onwards for a maximum tenure of four years, the Bank said in a statement. The minimum loan amount has been fixed at ₹20,000.

Also read: SBI launches video call life certificate submission facility for pensioners

The Bank emphasised that the EMI is as low as ₹2,560 per lakh. The loan availed will be disbursed directly into the dealer’s account.

SBI Chairman Dinesh Kumar Khara said this digital loan offering will position the Bank at the initial stage of a customer’s life cycle by offering a two-wheeler loan and thereafter upgrade the relationship along with their growth.

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SBI launches pre-approved 2-wheeler loan ‘SBI Easy Ride’ on YONO, BFSI News, ET BFSI

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State Bank of India has announced the launch of a pre-approved 2-wheeler loan scheme ‘SBI Easy Ride’ on its mobile banking app YONO. Eligible customers can apply for the loan through the app for an amount up to Rs. 3 lakhs, at a competitive interest rate of 10.5% per annum onwards, for a maximum tenure of four years.

“We believe this digital loan offering would help customers in buying their chosen two-wheeler. The product will also position the bank at the initial stage of a customer’s life cycle by offering a two-wheeler loan, and thereafter upgrade the relationship along with their growth,” chairman Dinesh Khara said.

The minimum loan amount has been fixed at Rs 20,000. The loan availed will be disbursed directly into the dealer’s account, and loans of up to 85% of the on-road price of the vehicle can be availed under this scheme.

Since its launch in 2017, YONO has more than 42 million registered users, and the bank has partnered with over 110 e-commerce players in more than 20 categories.



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In a first, personal loans beat credit to industry, BFSI News, ET BFSI

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MUMBAI: The share of personal loans in bank credit has for the first time overtaken overall loans to the industry sector during the second quarter of the current financial year. This has happened with loans to industry as of end-September 2021 shrinking by Rs 66,239 crore over March 2021 levels, while loans to individuals grew Rs 73,011 crore during the period.

According to data released by the Reserve Bank of India, bank credit outstanding on the last Friday of September was Rs 109.5 lakh crore. Of this, the share of loans to industry dropped to 26% (Rs 28.3 lakh crore) from 27% a year earlier. Personal loans, which were a quarter of all bank loans in September 2020, increased to 27% (Rs 29.2 lakh crore) by end-September 2021.

The drop in bank credit to the industry segment was largely due to companies in core industries deleveraging. Loans to iron and steel industries dropped by Rs 39,249 crore and loans to chemicals (which includes fertilisers, drugs and petrochemicals) shrunk by Rs 10,146 crore in the six months ended September. The few sectors which saw growth in credit were roads, ports and power. However, even this was not enough to show positive credit growth in the infrastructure segment.

Overall credit outstanding to large industry shrunk by 5% in the first six months of the fiscal. This has pulled down industrial loan growth to 2.3% despite credit to small and medium businesses rising.

In the personal segment, banks added Rs 20,096 crore of home loans to their portfolio in the last six months. They also increased their auto loan and gold loan book by Rs 3,000 crore each. Other personal loans were up by Rs 45,000 crore. Overall loans outstanding in the personal loan segment grew by Rs 73,000 crore in the six months ended September 2021. This has expanded the personal loan portfolio to Rs 29.18 lakh crore.

The data appears to indicate that banks have wrested market share from finance companies in the credit market. Typically, NBFCs borrow from banks and debt markets and lend. Bank credit to NBFCs, which is the largest component in loans to services sector, shrunk by Rs 61,124 crore in the last six months. This has resulted in the share of credit to NBFCs dropping from 9% (Rs 9.4 lakh crore) on end March 2021 to 8% (Rs 8.8 lakh crore) as of end September 2021. This has resulted in outstanding bank credit to the services sector declining by 3% since March 2021.

According to bankers, the decline in bank credit to large companies could be attributed to their deleveraging coupled with shifting to the debt market where cheaper money is available through commercial paper. Some businesses are seeing better cash realisations and do not feel the need to borrow.

In the NBFC segment, the classification of a large borrower as a non-performing asset by banks could have added to the decline in the segment. The home loan portfolio displays more consistency and does not occasionally shrink like other segments because home loans are long term and fresh disbursements have a compounding impact on the size of the portfolio.



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DBS Bank completes active loan switch ahead of LIBOR transition, BFSI News, ET BFSI

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DBS Bank India has announced active transitioning of an existing loan and derivative to new reference rates. This is part of the bank’s benchmark transition plan to adopt new Alternative Reference Rates (ARR) as Interbank Offered Rates (IBORs) are phased out.

DBS Bank has transitioned some of the existing loan and derivative contracts with two companies – Power Finance Corporation Ltd and REC Ltd – to the new reference rates. Existing contracts were benchmarked to Swap Offer Rate (SOR), and post this transition, all loans and derivatives have now moved to Singapore Overnight Rate Average (SORA), the new risk-free rate.

As legacy interest rate benchmarks SOR and Singapore Interbank Offered Rate (SIBOR) are systematically phasing out, SORA is the recommended SGD interest rate benchmark, which is expected to replace them. Banks across countries, including India, are also moving towards ARR benchmarks equivalent to SORA.

In July 2021, RBI issued an advisory to banks and financial institutions to cease entering into new financial contracts referencing London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR). Since the advisory, banks have executed transactions linked to the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) benchmark.



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Sri Lanka seeks USD 500-million loan from India for fuel purchases amid forex crisis, BFSI News, ET BFSI

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Colombo, The Sri Lankan government on Saturday said it is continuing efforts to secure a USD 500 million loan from India to ensure fuel supplies amid a severe foreign exchange crisis in the island nation. “The proposal has been sent to the Treasury for approval and would be submitted to the Cabinet thereafter,” said Energy Minister Udaya Gammanpila.

He said the Cabinet had already sanctioned USD 3.6-billion loan from Oman for fuel purchases.

Gammanpila indicated that continuous fuel supplies can only be guaranteed till January next year as the island was facing a foreign exchange crisis and higher global prices.

Long queues were seen at fuel pumps since Thursday due to speculation that retail prices would be hiked by the state fuel corporation.

Lanka IOC (LIOC), the subsidiary of Indian Oil Corporation in Sri Lanka, had hiked the retail prices of both petrol and diesel by Rs 5 per litre. The new prices were effective from Thursday midnight in the wake of the rising global oil prices.

State-run Ceylon Petroleum Corporation has asked the government to allow a price hike in view of its losses.

Gammanpila ruled out a price revision for the time being. He also blamed the opposition for spreading rumours of an impending fuel shortage in the country.

The price hike in the global oil prices has forced Sri Lanka to spend more on oil imports this year. The country’s oil bill has jumped 41.5 per cent to USD 2 billion in the first seven months of this year compared to last year.

Sri Lanka is facing a severe foreign exchange crisis after the pandemic hit the nation’s earnings from tourism and remittances, Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa had said last month.

The country’s gross domestic product contracted by a record 3.6 per cent in 2020 and its foreign exchange reserves plunged by half in one year to just USD 2.8 billion in July.

This has led to a 9 per cent depreciation of the Sri Lankan rupee against the dollar over the last year making imports more expensive.



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