Kotak Mahindra Bank, the country’s fourth-biggest private lender by market value, said its margins and unsecured loan business are affected by the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) embargo, but it has made progress in deepening relationships with Kotak 811 customers and enhanced offers to credit card customers. Ashok Vaswani, MD, conveyed this message to the analysts soon after declaring the first quarter results.
He indicated that the RBI has not given any timeline on when the ban, imposed in the last week of April on onboarding customers digitally and issuing credit cards, would be lifted.
“We have been assured that look, it’s not as if we are going to wait till you finish every single thing before we lift the embargo,” he said. The bank has shown strong commitment by adding resources, and the RBI is aware of it, added Vaswani.
“At what stage in this journey the RBI gets comfortable is very hard to predict,” Vaswani said. “When the embargo is lifted, we will come out even more strongly,” he stated.
He also said that the bank is undergoing a transformation in its distribution channel, and it aims to have about 3,000-3,500 branches in the next five years. At present, the bank has 1,965 branches.
He clarified, “We are not going to be a primary branch-based bank…we believe that by blanketing the top 68 cities with the current kind of brand infrastructure and by making the branch a one Kotak kind of asset which is accessed or leveraged by the SME businesses, or commercial businesses as well as the consumer businesses we will be able to get the maximum impact for our branches.” He said that the bank would be opening about 250 branches a year.
Shanti Ekambaram, deputy MD, said that mobilising savings deposits continues to be a challenge and that ‘savers to investor momentum continues, especially after elections that have accentuated.’ She said that the bank is taking initiatives to shore up deposits, such as simplifying savings products, launching a bundled proposition for certain key segments, and focusing on value for customer acquisition.
Kotak Mahindra Bank‘s average deposits rose 21% year over year to Rs 4.35 lakh crore, but the share of current and savings accounts dipped to 43% for the quarter ending June 2024 from 49% a year ago.
