Axis Bank to grow up to 6% faster than industry in medium to long term: CEO

Axis Bank said it will continue to grow 4-6% faster than the industry in the medium to long term, helped by focus on rural and semi-urban markets

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Axis Bank on Monday said it will continue to grow 4-6 per cent faster than the industry in the medium to long term, helped by focus on rural and semi-urban markets, improving digital infrastructure and Citibank India retail business.

Fiscal year 2023 was a breakout year for digital banking platform Axis 2.0 and the early leadership in building proprietary in-house digital native capabilities with full stack engineering, product and a design team of about 400 people have started yielding results, according to Axis Bank Managing Director and CEO Amitabh Chaudhry.

"Given the powerful integrated platform we are building, we will continue to grow 400 to 600 bps faster than the industry in the medium to long term.

"The significant strides we made during the year on our customer obsession journey, digital capabilities, Bharat Banking and successful acquisition of Citibank India Consumer Business further give us the confidence in sustaining this performance," he said in a message to shareholders.

In March last year, Axis Bank completed the acquisition of Citibank's consumer business and Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC) consumer business.

The positioning in the credit cards business has strengthened with the card advances market share improving by 450 basis points (bps) to 16.3 per cent, led by the acquisition of a quality and complementary credit card franchise.

According to the bank's annual report, the liability franchise received a boost with over 100 bps improvement in CASA ratio and access to over 1,600 Suvidha corporate relationships.

The integration of Citibank India Consumer Business remains well on track with about 3,200 Citi employees now integrated into the Axis organisation structure, it said.

Early traction from the Citibank customer base has been quite positive, it said, adding the interactions with several high-value customers suggest their acknowledgment of the seamless transition, continuation of highest levels of service, access to Axis Bank's extensive network of branches and wide product portfolio under the One Axis umbrella.

"We have already started incremental onboarding of erstwhile 'Suvidha' salary accounts on Axis Bank platform for additional locations across the country where Citi was hitherto not present. While the acquired Citi business being entirely retail runs at a higher cost, it comes with higher return ratios and is ROE accretive post integration," it said.

It does not impede the ability to deliver aspirational Return on Equity (ROE), the report said.

"We have identified 60+ synergy initiatives across the bank as we look to drive revenue and cost benefits. We believe that this integration between two highly complementary institutions will enable us to create the gold standard in the retail space," it said.

During the fiscal 2022-23, the report said the bank witnessed strong growth in deposits and advances led by focus on improving quality and granularity across businesses.

On advances, it said, the bank continued to grow faster than the industry with domestic loan book growth of 23 per cent y-o-y.