Current focus on retail segment: PNB Housing MD

PNB Housing Finance is currently focusing on growing its retail loan book while also cleaning up its corporate portfolio, according to managing director and chief executive officer Girish Kousgi.

The non-bank lender expects its affordable housing loan products to witness significant traction in FY24. “As of now, the focus is on retail and if you see the retail story, it has been pretty good. We have really scaled up our disbursements in the last two quarters,” he said.

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“The lender started the affordable housing vertical in Q4 of last fiscal. “I think we will see meaningful contribution from the affordable housing vertical this year.”

PNB Housing has 82 affordable housing branches as on March 31 and has disbursed loans worth Rs 137 crore in the segment.

“On an incremental basis, affordable housing will contribute around 11% of the retail loan book. In three years, there will be a good mix between affordable housing loans and prime loans within the entire retail space.”

The housing financier’s retail loan assets grew 10% year-on-year (y-o-y) to Rs 55,471 crore as on March 31, comprising nearly 94% of overall loan assets. On the other hand, the corporate segment fell 48% y-o-y to Rs 3,802 crore.

“It was a conscious call to de-grow the corporate book because of two reasons. Firstly, there was a lot of stress because we have very high non-performing assets (NPA). We wanted to resolve the gross NPA, bring them down to a comfortable level and restart in a different format altogether,” he said.

“We just have two accounts in the corporate NPA. Of this, 92% of NPA constitutes one account, which is backed by a leading developer. We are very comfortable on this account. We have a resolution plan for the other account, and this will materialise in the next 4-5 months.”

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Corporate gross NPA fell to 22.25% as on March 31 from 37.13% a year ago.

In May, the lender completed a rights issue of Rs 2,493.8 crore. With this, Kousgi said, the lender is now well-equipped to grow its loan book. “Our capital adequacy is now 30%. We are well capitalised and this is growth capital. We will utilise this to grow at a much faster pace.”