Fairfax Completes Investment in Catholic Syrian Bank

Posted by Planify on July 23rd, 2019

Company’s Overview

1. The Catholic Syrian Bank Limited is an Indian private sector bank with its headquarters at Thrissur, Kerala, India
2. It is  one  of  the  oldest  bank  in  India  which  commenced  business  on January 1st, 1921 with an authorized capital of Rs.5 lakhs and a paid up capital of Rs. 45270/.
3. The Catholic Syrian Bank provide loans to following Sector: Retail Asset Portfolio

Under this portfolio company distributes Gold loans and Non-gold loans.

In  FY17-18,  Retail  asset  portfolio  comprises  of  gold  loan  of  2,477  crore  and retail loans (non-gold) of 1,603 crore. During the year, gold loan book has grown by 22% from 2,025 crore as on 31st March 2017 to 2477 crore as on 31st March 2018. The non-gold retail portfolio growth is almost flat and stood at 1603 crore as on 31st March 2018 compared to 1626 crore as on 31st March 2017.

Fairfax on it’s Investment in Catholic Syrian Bank

SME Lending:

Bank  plays  an  important  role  in  supporting  the  Small  and  Medium  Enterprise (SME) Business across the geographies of India. SME Business portfolio stands at 3,693.6 crore as on March 31, 2018, equal to 36.86%  of  the  Bank’s  total  advance.  The  Bank  extends  working  capital,  term loan,  and  trade  finance  and  project  finance  facilities  to  SME  for  their  various financial need.

 Catholic Syrian Bank Limited (CSB) Pre IPO Shares Details

Priority Sector Lending:

Priority Sector Advance extended by the Bank stood at 3551.93 crore at the end of March 2018, constituting 42.96% of Adjusted Net Bank Credit.

This is against the mandated target of 40% prescribed by Reserve Bank of India. At present, the bank has a network of over 430 branches and more than 240 ATMs across India. The Bank also plans to open a number of branches in a phased manner.

Performance of the Bank in FY17-18

Indian Banking Environment

The performance of the banking sector remained sombre, Public Sector Banks in  particular.  The  position  of  stressed  assets  coupled  with  the  discovery  of frauds and governance issues in the banks have made this year a challenging one  for  the  whole  banking  industry.  On  a  positive  note,  the  Insolvency  and Bankruptcy Code mechanism finally took shape this year which we expect to be a shot in the arm for the Banking Industry in resolving the prevalent NPA Crisis.

Financial Performance in FY17-18

(i)  The  growth  in  advances  by  15  %  taking  the  gross  advances  to  above  10,000 crore.

(ii) The Credit Deposit Ratio improved to 63.6 % as on 31st March 2018 from 54.5 % as on 31st March 2017. Increase has been mainly in less risky advances (high rated corporate and gold loans), given the bank’s low risk appetite in the face of low capital base.

(iii) This is reflected in the fact that the effective risk weight of advances of the bank  has  actually  decreased  from  53%  as  on  31.03.2017  to  49%  as  on 31.03.2018. Bank could effectively redeploy 1,200 crore of Treasury Assets to loans, increasing returns but not increasing commensurately the risks.

(iv)  Bank’s deposits slightly de-grew on account of decrease in term deposits which was due to the conscious call taken by the Bank, to reduce high cost term deposits & improve low cost CASA accounts. Cost of deposits has been brought down from 6.90% in March 2017 to 6.15 % in March 2018. CASA of the Bank improved by 276 crore to `3971 crore as on 31st March 2018 from 3695 crore in March 2017. Bank has improved its CASA ratio to 27.03 %, showing an increase of 225 bps from 24.78 %.

(v)  Bank  has  also  reduced  wholesale  deposits  by  482  crore  and  wholesale deposits as a proportion of total deposits is only 4.5% now indicating very low concentration risk.

Read on https://www.planify.in/buy-catholic-syrian-bank-pre-ipo-shares/