Bandhan Bank is looking to scale up the share of secured loans to close to 70 per cent of its total advances by 2025, backed by a growth in housing loans and MSME advances. Secured loans currently account for around 39 per cent of its advances, while the remaining 61 per cent comes from unsecured loans, primarily microcredit.

According to Chandra Sekhar Ghosh, MD and CEO, Bandhan Bank, there has been a steady growth in demand for housing loans and MSME advances, and this would help drive the growth in the secured loan book.

The bank isexpecting growthin other retail loans, such as gold loan, auto loan and personal loan.

Currently, a major share of our business is coming from microcredit, which is unsecured in nature. But our housing loan portfolio is growing and there is a huge demand, so we want to tap into that demand,” Ghosh told media on the sidelines of an event to announce Sourav Ganguly as the bank’s brand ambassador here on Thursday.

The bank’s housing loan book has grown by nearly 20 per cent during the first quarter of the current financial year on a year-on-year basis and it expects the growth momentum to continue. Housing loans account for nearly 26 per cent of the bank’s total advances.

The MSME would be another growth engine for the bank, and it would look to share the secured portfolio. MSME currently accounts for around 38 per cent of total advances. It expects the other retail loans such as gold, auto and personal, to account for nearly 10 per cent of its total advances by 2025.

The bank is also working on introducing its own credit card and is hopeful of rolling it out by the second quarter of next fiscal. It has set up a data analytics team to analyse demand and capacity for credit absorption among its existing customers.

“We have a huge database of customers, and we can look at multiple customer requirements by analysing the data. So we have set up a data analytics team to analyse demand and capacity of customers for cross-selling of products,” he said.

Branch expansion

Bandhan Bank, which has been largely focused on the eastern and northeastern regions, is looking to strengthen its presence in the north, west and southern markets.

Almost 47 per cent of its 5,640 branches are in the eastern and northeastern regions. Moving forward, it would like to add more branches in other regions. It plans to take its total branch network to close to 8,000 by 2025.

On roping in Sourav Ganguly as the brand ambassador, Ghosh said, “Sourav has been one of the most successful captains of the Indian cricket team due to his foresight, dedication and commitment to the game. There is a lot of congruence in the values that Sourav and Bandhan Bank embody. He is also a global icon and commands respect from all quarters. We are confident that this partnership will help us garner more attention, leading to greater awareness of the brand and thus propelling us further in our growth story.”

Ganguly, who took over as the BCCI chief in 2019, is expected to complete his stint soon. In a fireside chat, Ganguly said, “You can’t play cricket forever, you can’t be an administrator forever. Every administrative job has a tenure and will come to an end. I will go on to do something else now.”