Personal loan

The bank on Tuesday announced the launch of personal loan facility for salaried individuals across 14 Tier 1 and Tier 2 locations, including Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Calcutta, Pune, Surat, Mumbai, Mysore, Amkaleshwar, Coimbatore, Kochi, Chennai and Vodaodara. This is in addition to the home loan and business loan offered by the bank.

The personal loan will be available for salaried professionals who are earning a monthly salary above Rs 15,000. Individuals can avail loans starting from Rs 50,000 up to Rs 15,00,000.

We had deferred rollout of banking outlets last year to manage our costs in view of unforeseen large credit costs due to demonetisation

Sumit Ghosh

Ujjivan Small Finance Bank plans to accelerate branch expansion this fiscal after demonetisation had put a brake on the bank’s plan by pushing up the credit cost of the lender.

The niche bank has also diversified its loan book by introducing personal loans for salaried individuals in smaller (Tier-1 and Tier-2) cities.

“We had deferred rollout of banking outlets last year in order to manage our cost in view of unforeseen large credit costs due to demonetisation. We plan to accelerate the establishment of banking outlets this year, which is on track. We established 180 in the first two quarters and doubled our footprint.

“Ujjivan now has 367 banking outlets and 95 asset centers. We expect the number of banking outlets to reach 475 by end of March 2019, out of which 120 will be in the unbanked rural centers,” Samit Ghosh, managing director and CEO of Ujjivan Small Finance Bank, informed analysts at the quarterly earnings call disclosed to the bourses on Tuesday.

Of the 108 banking outlets that will be opened in the second half, 63 will be unbanked rural centres in Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Bengal, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, with each banking outlets serving assets and liabilities.

With a loan book primarily tilted towards micro credit, the small finance bank had seen its business being affected by the cash dependant microfinance segment in the aftermath of demonetisation. There has since been an improvement in both disbursement and portfolio at the risk of default. Ujjivan, however, plans to diversify its loan book which stood at Rs 8,317 crore for the September-quarter.