Union Bank of India will bring down its gross non-performing assets (GNPA) to gross advances ratio below 6 per cent by March-end 2024 against 7.34 per cent as at June-end 2023, said MD & CEO A Manimekhalai.

Towards this end, the public sector bank is eyeing a reduction (through cash recovery, upgradation and write-off) of about ₹16,000 crore in GNPAs in the current financial year.

In FY24, UBI expects to make recovery of ₹4,500 crore from written-off accounts, against ₹5,500 crore in FY23.

Senior officials of the bank said eight accounts (aggregating about ₹3,000 crore) which have been transferred by the bank to National Asset Reconstruction Company Ltd (NARCL) are in advanced stages of resolution.

Accounts to NARCL

Overall, the bank expects to transfer 45 accounts aggregating about ₹10,000 crore to NARCL.

In a media interaction, the UBI chief said the bank is working towards increasing the proportion of low-cost current account, savings account (CASA) as a proportion of total deposits.

UBI’s CASA declined to 34.60 per cent as at June-end 2023 against 35.62 per cent as at March-end 2022. The bank is an outlier on this metric vis-a-vis peer PSBs, which, on an average, have CASA of about 45-50 per cent.

Manimekhalai said the bank has opened a special vertical to mobilise CASA deposits, launched special products for women and children, among others, to increase these low-cost deposits.

Nitesh Ranjan, Executive Director, said the bank expects to launch an upgraded mobile banking platform in the fourth quarter of FY24.

About 50 per cent of the RAM (retail, agriculture and MSME) advances will be originated digitally in two-three years, he added.

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