Kolkata-headquartered UCO Bank has Rs 20,000-25,000 crore of corporate loans in the pipeline from sectors including steel, renewable energy, textile and non-bank lenders, managing director and CEO Ashwani Kumar told FE.
“We have around Rs 20,000-25,000 crore of corporate loan proposals, but are focusing more on advances where margins meet our internal benchmark. In PSU (public sector units) entities, the yield is lower,” he said.
The Reserve Bank of India’s draft guidelines will likely have a 5-10% hit on UCO Bank’s liquidity coverage ratio, which stood at 130% as on Q1, Kumar said.
The bank’s overall advances stood at Rs 1.93 trillion as on June 2024, up 18% year-on-year (YoY), and 3% sequentially. Retail, agriculture and MSME loans accounted for 61% of overall loans while corporate loans formed the rest. Corporate loans grew 20% YoY to Rs 64,611 crore in Q1FY25.
Overall deposits grew 7% to Rs 2.68 trillion for the June quarter. Kumar said UCO is expanding tap banking facility in its 3,000 branches, launching 120 new branches in the current fiscal and has started offering a new salary account product and women-centric deposit scheme with slightly higher interest rate to enhance the deposit growth.
“In the current environment, it is a challenge for all banks to accrue CASA. But, the good part for us is that we have been able to maintain the CASA ratio in the 38-39% range. If we are able to keep it near 40%, considering the current environment where customers are turning to be investor than saver, it will be a good achievement,” Kumar said.
UCO Bank is targeting to lower its gross and net non-performing asset ratios to 3% and 0.65%, respectively, by FY25 compared with 3.32% and 0.78% as on Q1FY25.