Bank of Maharashtra plans to recover 5% from written-off accounts in FY24

Bank of Maharashtra (MahaBank) on Friday said it was expecting to recover more than Rs 1,200 crore from written-off accounts in the current financial year (FY23) as part of steps to enhance its asset quality profile.

The bank is looking to recover over 5 per cent from the written-off accounts pegged at Rs 20,000 crore, Asheesh Pandey, executive director of Mahabank, told the media on the sidelines of a customer interaction here.

Written-off accounts are non-performing loans, for which lenders have made a 100 per cent provision and knocked out from the loan book. However, the obligation of the borrower to repay and the lender's responsibility to recover remains intact.   

Much of this recovery would be from small accounts, Pandey said. “With an upturn in the economy, the cash flows are better for small businesses, increasing prospects for settlements. Social media and enhanced data is helping the bank step up monitoring and reach to those in default,” he said.

The Pune-based lender had recovered Rs 943 crore from written-off accounts in FY23, up from Rs 642 crore in FY22, according to the document filed Qualified Institutional Placement (QIP).

Pandey said the bank would hold extensive consultations before finalising the board-approved policy for compromise settlement and technical write-offs. Last week, the Reserve Bank of India came out with a framework for such exercise that provides room for settlement in cases classified as fraud and wilful defaulters.

The bank’s asset quality profile improved with gross non-performing assets (NPAs) declining to 2.47 per cent of gross advances as of March 31, from 3.94 per cent by the end of March 2022. The net NPAs declined to 0.25 per cent as of March 31 from 0.97 per cent by the end of March 2022.