JK Bank braves turbulent times in banking industry, registers Rs.202.72 Cr profit for FY 17-18

Srinagar, May 30(KMW): J&K Bank while showing resilience during turbulent times in banking industry has registered a profit of Rs.202.72 crore for the financial year 2017-18. The Board of the bank adopted the audited financial results for the Q4 & FY 17-18 here today.

The audited results reveal that the bank registered reported a total business of 140304.78 Cr comprising deposits of 80006.50 Cr and advances of 60298.28cr as on 31st March 2018 depicting a growth of 11.3% over the previous fiscal. Within the state, the bank reported a robust credit growth of 20% in line with the state focused lending strategy of the current leadership of the bank.

Commenting on the numbers for the 4th quarter Chairman & CEO Parvez Ahmed said “The banking industry has seen a very difficult and challenging 4th quarter with RBI coming out with revised guidelines on NPA identification and treatment besides quashing the restructuring schemes leading to some major slippages across the industry. Then there was the NiravModi effect which lead to one of our accounts M/S Gitanjali Gems getting downgraded. In the JK state rehabilitated portfolio RBI notified some divergence in classification. All this resulted in enhanced provisioning and interest reversals which precipitated in muted bottom-line for the quarter.”

“On the brighter side,” he added “we were able to complete the cleanup and consolidation act. In the current fiscal though there will still be pressure on the balance sheet but we do not anticipate any major downgrade in the pipeline. We have concomitantly completed the succession planning exercise along with revamping of the organization structure with the aim of improving the systems and procedures to strengthen the culture of compliance. The focus has been on the risk management and capital planning too for regulatory compliance and growth over a longer period of time”.

“Our promoters the state government and the regulator Reserve Bank of India supported us well during the tough preceding year with their guidance and support particularly in the management of rehabilitated portfolio of J&K state, the former supporting the business community with Chief Minister business interest relief scheme and the latter by allowing us the staggering provisioning for interest capitalized in rehabilitated accounts.”, acknowledged the Chairman.

Commending the concerted efforts of the staff of the bank in the challenging environment in the banking industry he added,’ the biggest anchor has been the human capital of the bank who have worked tirelessly for the last one and a half years to execute the multi-pronged strategy devised to tide over the difficult times in the bank. We could manage to keep ourselves in the green zone riding on NPA recovery of Rs 2200 cr which included timely asset sale of some distressed assets, credit growth of 12.5% and better liability management by deprioritizing high cost bulk deposits. All this will not have been possible but for the synergistic efforts by the dedicated team at all levels.”

“During the current fiscal, our focus will still be on conservation & augmentation of capital, NPA recovery, containing the slippages especially in the restructured portfolio and strengthening of the compliance framework in the Bank. On the business front we are targeting a balance sheet growth of 20% which shall be mainly driven by credit growth of 30% in J&K state where we see huge opportunity lying untapped in the retail credit.” added Parvez Ahmed.

Notably the Bank has reported a digital transaction percentage of 48%, CASA ratio of 50.89%, NIIM of 3.65%, NPA coverage ratio of 65.83% net NPA of 4.90% and profit FY 17-18 at 202.72 Cr. The bank is continuously introducing new customized products in the J&K state besides driving the push to sourcing of new retail loans to digital channels by targeting strategic tie up with Government departments and institutional customers to drive its retail credit growth in the J&K state.