South Indian Bank is issuing shares to HDFC Life, Kotak Mahindra Life, SBI Life and ICICI Lombard. MD and CEO of South Indian Bank, Murali Ramakrishnan, spoke to CNBC-TV18 to discuss the issue and said that as part of the exercise the band has got approval for issue of Rs 750 crore worth of equity from the board as well as from the AGM.

Ramakrishnan said, "We have being communicating repeatedly to the market that we are in a process of beefing up capital, as a part of that exercise we got an approval for issue of Rs 750 crore worth of equity from the board as well as from the AGM. Towards the first part of that exercise we will be raising anywhere between Rs 200-300 crore of fresh equity, so I am happy to say that we are raising Rs 240 crore worth of equity through four reputed institutions."

The MD and CEO added, "We are looking at raising Rs 750 for taking care of requirements for the coming year starting April. We are looking at reorganising the asset plans of the bank by growing retail MSME, SME and agri businesses so this tranche which I am talking about of Rs 750 crore hopefully will suffice the requirement for next full year."

"Also in area of corporate banking -- which we have been continuously de-growing to takeout the impact of concentration risk -- we will have a calibrated growth where we are identifying certain corporates proactively and we would like to on-board them and work with them to ensure that the quality of the book is strengthen. We will also be looking at granulising the entire portfolio mix."

On collection efficiency, Ramakrishnan said, "We are seeing recovery in terms of collection efficiency pretty much maintaining. We are seeing collection efficiencies going up to as high as 95 percent plus. For Q3, we saw collection efficiency of close to around 89 percent as against 91 percent pre-COVID period. It is pretty much in line with what we have been anticipating."

Watch the video, for the complete management commentary.

(Edited by : Jerome Anthony)

First Published:Mar 1, 2021 1:28 PM IST