Legacy issues behind us, PNB is charting a new growth path: Ashok Chandra

Leaving legacy issues behind, Punjab National Bank (PNB) has embarked on a new growth path with a distinct focus on operating profit to outdo competition in the current fiscal and subsequent years, its managing director Ashok Chandra has said.

Reduction in NPAs, low-cost deposit mobilisation, increasing avenues for fee income enhancement and recovery from bad loans are other priority areas of the bank, which have been showing good improvement in various parameters, including net profit.

For the financial year ended March 2025, PNB has emerged as the top bank in terms of profit growth among 12 public sector banks (PSBs) with a 102 per cent rise. The bank's net profit doubled to Rs 16,630 crore compared to Rs 8,245 crore in the previous fiscal.

The bank has reported a 14 per cent rise in total business at Rs 26.83 trillion in FY25, one of the highest in the banking system.

Pointing out that the bank had a lot of legacy issues, including one of the highest gross and net non-performing assets (NPAs) numbers among the public sector banks, Chandra said they have been brought down significantly, with gross NPA slipping below 4 per cent and net sub at 0.5 per cent. 

The bank has set an ambitious target to bring them further during the current financial year, he told PTI in an interview.

As part of the growth plan, he said, "We are going to put focus on the operating profit side. This is a direction which we have given to the entire field team and the corporate team. Also, whatever business we do, we should do it with the clear intention of earning profit out of every activity".

Given the focus on the RAM (retail, agriculture and MSME) sector, and current account and savings account (CASA), he said the bank is going to witness improvement in operating profit.

"We want a bank like ours, which is the second largest in terms of domestic business, should also achieve that position in terms of operating profit and net profit," Chandra, who assumed charge of the PNB in January 2025, said.

Sharing new initiatives to achieve the objective, he said the bank has revamped its entire CASA products last month and added a lot of attractive features.

"Now, we have very specialised schemes for salaried and non-salaried persons. There is a special scheme for women, youth, senior citizens, and pensioners. We have also come out with a good scheme for the defence personnel and farmers. All these schemes have been customised to meet their specific needs with a lot of attractive features," he said.

Chandra said the bank has opened 2 lakh new savings accounts of salaried persons in the last 3 months and mobilised additional deposits of Rs 300 crore from these accounts.

"We have set a target of opening 10 lakh new savings accounts in the next six months and garnering at least Rs 2,000 crore deposits from such accounts," he added.