“We want to increase stake in insurance JV”: M Paramasivam

Q1. How big is the agri book? What will be the impact of El Nino and deficient monsoon on your Agri book?

Ans—Our agriculture portfolio is around Rs 2.1 lakh crore and the gross NPA under agriculture is around 8 per cent. Definitely, there will be an impact of El Nino and deficient monsoon but we are closely monitoring the situation. What we have done is that we have accelerated activity in the field. We have deployed 2,000 agri officers who will be available in the branches for proper monitoring to help the customers out of trouble. Secondly, there is one scheme called the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana which is for notified
crops in notified areas. My request to all the customers is to get this crop insurance scheme. If at all any issue comes, definitely the government insurance scheme will take care of the farmers’ direct liabilities and protect them.

Q2. Your Current account Saving account (CASA) growth is only 7.33 per cent year on year. What is your CASA mobilisation strategy?

Ans–Our focus is fully on salaried accounts and pensioner's accounts. We are providing digital offerings to the customers. Almost 96 percent of our transactions are happening digitally. Apart from that, we have started a new thing in the current year, placing relationship managers (RM) at the branch level. These RMs take care of the top 250 customers of a particular branch who would be given special treatment. We will be working towards mobilising more deposits and offering quality advances to these customers. We have shortlisted 2,500
branches that we are focussing on out of the 10,000 branches. We want to create PNB as a primary account for our customers where all their dealings are centralized with the bank.

Q3. With FDI limits in insurance raised to 100 per cent, do you have plans to monetise stake in PNB MetLife Insurance company?

Ans—As such, we don't have a plan to dilute stake. In fact, we want to increase our stake in the insurance company.

Q 4. What are your plans on acquisition financing?

Ans—There is an opportunity of more than Rs 8 lakh crore in acquisition financing system as a whole. In the days to come, as and when the opportunity comes, definitely as a bigger bank, we will be participating and we will take a major share in that.

Q5. What is your guidance on NIMs?

Ans—Around 65 per cent of our advances are linked to repo rate. Here as and when the repo rate increases, our lending rate increases immediately from the next day itself. So, this will definitely have a positive impact. Secondly, we are shedding low yielding advances and going for better yielding advances whereby our NIM can be protected and can be bettered. Moreover, with GDP at around 7 per cent, there is a sustained credit demand available in our country. So, around 2.5 to 2.7 per cent is the NIM guidance.