Mumbai: ICICI Bank Ltd India's posted a 15 per cent rise in quarterly net profit, beating estimates, helped by rising demand for loans from retail customers and higher fee income.
ICICI's net profit in March rose to 26.52 billion rupees ($434.36 million) from 23.04 billion rupees a year earlier, the bank said on Friday.Indian banks have recently shifted their focus from corporate lending to consumer debt in a bid to avoid an increase in bad loans by companies struggling in a economy growing at its slowest pace in a decade.
ICICI said its loan book grew an annual 17 per cent to 3.4 trillion rupees as of end of March. Retail loans grew faster at 23 percent. ICICI's net interest income, the difference between interest earned and paid, also rose 14.6 percent to 43.57 billion rupees in the quarter. Net interest margin for the quarter was 3.35 percent.
Indian banks have seen a surge in loan defaults over the past year, and have also started to boost provisions. ICICI said its provisions for bad loans had risen more than 55 per cent in the March quarter from the same year ago period to 7.14 billion rupees.
Net non-performing loans as a percentage of total assets rose to 0.97 percent during the quarter from 0.77 percent a year in the same year-ago period, but they remained below the sector average of around 4 per cent in 2013.
Shares in ICICI, which has a market value of nearly $25 billion, were down 2.6 per cent , under performing a 0.7 per cent fall in the Bank Nifty and a 0.8 per cent fall in the Nifty.
The bank's smaller rival HDFC on Tuesday reported a 23 per cent rise in net profit, the slowest growth in a more than a decade and slightly lower than estimates, as a weaker economy put the brakes on lending.
