AU Small Finance Bank's net profit soars 68% to Rs 302 cr in Dec quarter

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The Jaipur-based AU Small Finance Bank on Friday said strong loan sales and better asset quality have helped it post a strong set of financial numbers with a 68 per cent growth in net profit for three months to December 2021.

Fund-based disbursements increased 33 per cent in the reporting quarter to Rs 8,152 crore, as the operating environment normalised, while the non-fund disbursements jumped 54 per cent to Rs 627 crore, the bank said in a statement.

Its overall assets under management jumped 26 per cent to Rs 42,023 crore in the December 2021 quarter.

The bank's gross advances rose 33 per cent to Rs 40,719 crore from Rs 30,523 crore.

What has helped bottomline (profit) more was a full 89-basis point (bp) reduction in the cost of funds to 5.9 per cent, giving better margins or net interest margin at 6.3 per cent and also the improved asset quality.

Gross NPAs fell 60 bps, or Rs 94 crore, to 2.6 per cent or Rs 1,058 crore from Rs 1,151 crore or 3.2 per cent.

Net NPAs improved by 40 bps to 1.3 per cent of net advances.

Yet, the bank made a buffer provisioning of Rs 300 crore, which is 75 bps of net advances.

Its low-cost deposit ratio or CASA (current account, saving account) improved to 39 per cent from 22 per cent a year ago, boosting the overall deposits by 49 per cent to Rs 44,278 crore from Rs 29,708 crore.

Its Managing Director and CEO Sanjay Agarwal attributed the robust numbers to the significant improvement in the overall business environment resulting in strong disbursements and much better collection efficiency, which stood at 106 per cent during the quarter, up from 97 per cent for the same period last year.

"These factors, along with the secured nature of our loan book, led to a significant asset quality improvement, along with continued improvement across other key focus areas such as improving the granularity of the deposit base, healthy asset growth driven by small-ticket secured loans, increasing adoption of digital properties and credit card offerings," he said.

The fund-based disbursements of Rs 8,152 crore, which rose from Rs 6,115 crore in the same quarter of the previous year, included ECLGS of Rs 48 crore in the third quarter.

AU Bank is the largest small finance bank with 880 touchpoints serving 23.7 lakh customers in 15 states and two Union territories. It has an employee base of over 25,500.