IndusInd Bank will launch its digital bank Indie this quarter, MD and CEO Sumant Kathpalia said on Monday at a press meet after the bank’s January-March result.
You have mentioned that you are looking to increase your branches. What is the strategy there?
We continue to believe that branches play a very important role in the client journey. All our market surveys show that it does give clients confidence to see a branch near premises. While we may go digital, branches will continue to play a very important role as a part of our expansion plan.
Across banks, we are witnessing a growth on unsecured loans. How do you see this?
We are also growing, but within our means. We have always said that consumer unsecured loans will be less than 5% of our book and it is at 4.8%. We have a microfinance book that is growing very fast. Acquiring of merchants is also rising very fast. We want to be very cautious. While the growth will come, we have to balance our unsecured exposure within the overall book.
Any product segment that you want to increase your focus on or possibly introduce?
There are four-to-five areas. We are launching a digital bank. We want to play scale in the individual segment and we are calling it Indie. You will see that launch in the quarter. We are expecting 8 million clients in the next three years with Rs 50,000 crore of balance sheet. We believe that merchant acquiring business in Bharat Financial has done very well and we want to scale it up to Rs 15,000 crore in the next three years. It comes at a very good yield. We will convert our microfinance business into a micro-banking unit. You will see us launching scooter loans, affordable housing, home improvements in that order very shortly.