ICICI Bank Limited (NYSE:IBN) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Anindya Banerjee: I think as far as the competitive intensity in rates, that is kind of continuing. I mean, we’ll have to see if things change in Q4, but certainly in Q3, across most of the products, mortgages and corporate lending, we continue to see a fair degree of competitive intensity. The way we look at it is to try and be disciplined in our pricing and to kind of look at the customer and see what are the — what is the total relationship value that we can have with the client and their ecosystem and then take a call on the loan pricing. I mean, in general, I’m not particularly focused on loan growth. So in that sense, we are able to calibrate our pricing decision. I’m sorry, what was your second question?

Nitin Aggarwal: Yes. So just related to this, like has your aggregate mortgage portfolio yield come down over, say, second quarter?

Anindya Banerjee: No, it could not have. Because the incremental business takes time to feed through. You had another question after the yield competitiveness. I’m sorry, I missed it.

Nitin Aggarwal: That was like on the unsecured loan mix, how do you see that trending further?

Anindya Banerjee: On the unsecured loan mix, I think as far as personal loans is concerned, as we have mentioned, we have taken some steps in terms of refining the credit parameters. Basically, in any portfolio, you have certain cohorts, which contribute more to the delinquencies and you try to figure out what are the origination markers of those cohorts and then cut origination in those particular segments, which is what we’ve done. And we’ve also rationalized, for example, sourcing payouts as well as we moved our pricing on personal loans by maybe 20, 25 basis points. So I would expect that growth in that portfolio may continue to moderate a little bit even from the current level. But from an overall P&L impact, I would think that it should not have much of a P&L impact because in any product or business, it’s not just about the yield and the margin.

Hopefully, if we are managing the sourcing cost well and that will contribute to profitability, and hopefully, if we are reducing in the right cohorts, that will contribute to credit costs being better as well.

Nitin Aggarwal: Right. And around credit costs, any comments around that?

Anindya Banerjee: No, I think I spoke earlier in relation to your question. I mean, I do agree that there is some noise in that line item this quarter because of the AIF and the large corporate recovery, but if one kind of tries to even that out, as I said, we are — would be at about maybe 50 bps of loans and 10% of the PPOP. So it is quite well contained and sort of within our risk appetite.

Operator: Next question is from the line of M.B. Mahesh from Kotak Securities.

M.B. Mahesh: Anindya, just 2 questions. One is on Slide 34. There has been a drop in the AA kind of rated portfolio, and then increase in the BBB part of the portfolio. If you could explain that.

Anindya Banerjee: Yes. So actually, Mahesh, I think 2 things largely explain that. One is that the reduction in the NBFC portfolio, most of our NBFC portfolio is well rated, rated A and above. So as a result of the reduction in that portfolio, we would have seen some reduction in the outstanding in the higher-rated category. And the second factor was that we had one of the larger upgrades of NPLs that we had got upgraded — got rated in the BBB family on upgrade. So it’s one — so one is a sort of, I would say, positive movement from a capital and profitability perspective. The other is a positive movement from a credit perspective. But yes, because of those 2, the mix does look slightly different.

M.B. Mahesh: Okay. Second question, is there an interest to us and impact on account of the [KCC in quarter 4], which is meaningful?

Anindya Banerjee: So we’ve not really given a number. I mean, that’s part of sort of margin happens every first and third quarter. So we’ve not called out that number separately.

M.B. Mahesh: I think this — I didn’t get the line of thought. On the unsecured loans, are you saying that things have started to worsen? Or you say that it is at the margin remaining more or less the same?

Anindya Banerjee: No, I think it is remaining more or less the same. I mean, we have been looking at that portfolio very closely. As I said, in any portfolio, at any point of time, there’s always a bottom cohort which one could sort of do without. And given the overall commentary on unsecured and the increase in capital charge and so on, we have tried to sort of trim that part of the portfolio.