Citi India’s profit hits all-time high on margins

TNN
Mumbai: Citi India has reported its highest ever net profit of Rs 3,626 crore for FY17 — an increase of 12% over Rs 3,233 crore in FY16. The record profits come on the back of a strong growth in retail business, which is reflected in the improvement of the bank’s net interest margin to 5.4% from 5.1% last year.
Profit before tax for Citibank India stood at Rs 6,185 crore versus Rs 5,777 crore in the previous financial year.“The strong momentum across our retail and institutional businesses has led to growth in net interest income, fees and commission. Judicious expense controls have allowed us to maintain steady operating efficiency, leading to increased profitability” Citi India CFO Niraj Parekh said. Citi India’s net non-performing assets have remained unchanged at 0.5%.
Digitisation of both corporate and retail business have improve efficiencies and helped the bank build low-cost current and savings account deposits (CASA). These deposits are now 58.2% of total deposits as compared to 49.7% earlier. The bank disbursed Rs 2,34,181 crore of loans, including those booked in offshore locations, representing a growth of 13.4% over the prior year.
For Citi India, total assets, including credit extended to Indian corporate clients from offshore Citi entities, stood at Rs 2,02,855 crore. The bank has been able to generate revenues disproportionate to its network as it has managed to leverage international operations to push fee-based income. The multinational bank holds a 6.9% market share of India’s domestic payment flows and 6.6% of India’s merchandise and software services trade flows. It also has a 14.8% share of forex merchant flows as on March 31, 2017 .During the year, Citi has seen a resurgence in its retail lending portfolio.
“Citibank India is among the leaders in credit cards with 13% market share of retail credit card spends in the country, while average spends per card per year is 1.4 times higher than the industry average,” said a statement issued by the bank.The group added 2,039 employees during the fiscal year, bringing the total number of employees to 14,543 as on March 31, 2017. Of the total employee base, Citi Service centres housed under Citicorp Services India engage 8,748 professionals. Citi India made 381 new hires for its various associate programmes from top business and graduate schools and technical institutes.