Banking

The recent collapses of SVB and Signature bank created massive panic among depositors and investors in the US. In this story, we address what needs to happen for other banks to be forced to book losses on their security portfolios, and what the triggers are and how much cushion US banks have.

Q3'23 earnings, and this quarter, like the last one, has been solid. Net interest margins (NIMs) - the spreads between lending yields and cost of funds - have gone up across the board.

This article highlights 5 interesting takeaways from RBI's 'trends & progress in banking' report. This document is a ~250-pager published by RBI once a year, covering a wide variety of information on the performance of banks and non-banks.

Q2 FY23 earnings season is here, and similar to last quarter, banks continue to report strong earnings growth.

Our update this week is an attempt to provide a simplified summary of the 2022 Nobel prize in economic sciences and potential applications to Indian economy.

However, even if the global economy enters a recession, India is very well positioned. We've done a great job of keeping inflation under control and our GDP is estimated to grow by 7.4% in FY23 (IMF estimates). But it's not just inflation control, there is more to cheer about!

Two Small Finance Banks (SFBs) - Fincare and Utkarsh - filed their DRHPs with SEBI in early August. Both are IPOing since they have to - they are mandated (per RBI guidelines) to go public within 3 years of crossing networth of Rs. 500 crores, and they've both hit this timeline.

Key highlights from Bank Q1 FY23 earnings - most banks reported strong net profit growth aided by lower provisions. However, several saw a contraction in their PPOP and some banks are taking a bet on unsecured retail.

Retail lending has significantly increased over the last 10 years, and this has happened at the expense of corporate lending. Our update this week dives into why we think corporate lending might be well positioned to take off over the next few years.

Q4 2022 earnings season is here, and we're back with our quarterly ZCharts earnings dashboards. Most banks have reported strong growth in profitability this quarter - some of the larger banks like Canara, Kotak, ICICI and Axis have delivered YoY profit growth north of 50%!

RBI announced a 'surprise' rate hike this past Wednesday at an unscheduled meeting - key policy rates that were hiked include the repo rate (+40 bps or basis points, 100 bps is 1%) and the cash reserve ratio or CRR (+50 bps).

HDFC Bank and HDFC Limited, two of the largest financial entities in India, are merging into one. This merger - subject to regulatory approvals - will create a combined balance sheet of ~25 Trillion rupees – that is equivalent to ~12% of India’s GDP!

Q3 FY2022 earnings season is here, and we are back with our quarterly ZCharts earnings dashboards that allow you to access financial services earnings in a single place - in a visual, easy to consume format.

Dhani and InCred - two fintech lending companies - are raising debt from the public. Both companies opened an NCD offering (non-convertible debenture, a borrowing instrument) this month - Dhani's offer closed earlier this week (27th Jan), and InCred's issue closes mid-February.

Happy New Year! We're back post-break with a look at the RBI's annual report on the trends & progress in banking- a 248-pager that was released end of December. While it is impossible to do justice to this mammoth report in a single ZCharts analysis, we've pulled out 4 interesting insights for you.