Loan growth: 12-15% (Q1) -> 10% (Q2) -> 8% (Q3) -> 13-15% (Q4).

Going ahead given that I know it's a short stint so far, but how are you looking at growth in the Bank for the next 1 year? Is there anything you're waiting for to accelerate in terms of any of the Balance Sheet metrics? Or do you think we can start with 15% plus growth? And second, if you could help us with the average CASA growth in quarter 4. And compared to the loan growth, maybe the CASA has held up despite the rate cuts, but how do we sort of grow that in line maybe in that 14% to 15% on an average basis?

I'll start with the CASA growth on the average basis. On both CA and SA have sequentially grown in the range of about 4%. In fact, CA sequential growth has been slightly more than 4%, but blended is about 4%. And if I actually look at Term Deposits growth, the Term Deposits also have grown big picture at about 4%. So broadly anchored around a 4% CASA and TD. If I look at the year-on-year growth on CASA, that is anchored at around 11% growth rate on an average. On next year's growth, we do believe we are a franchise that should be delivering growth in line with the industry, if not targeting more. We've already seen between December and March that the sequential momentum is beginning to quite accelerate. The book is slated to grow in double digits next year, broadly anchored around the 14% to 15% range.

If I could just squeeze in one last question on the margin. This RIDF rundown has been quite healthy last year. Going into next year, should this trajectory on margin expansion continue Q-o-Q? Or could we see this coming back a bit?

On a year-on-year basis, some of the rundowns that we had in RIDF this year also were more heavy from an H2 perspective. So FY27 comparison to FY26, even if it is year ended, should have no material bearing. But there is a rundown plan. We've ended this year at about INR 27,900 crores, ballpark INR 28,000 crores. We think that next year, at a minimum, the reduction should be about INR 6,500 crores. That could also go as high as INR 9,000 crores by the end of March '27.

First question is on your growth mix. We have achieved 1% ROA, Asset Quality seems to be holding up reasonably well. But Retail Slippages, while they are improving, they are still 2.93%. And Retail Advances are both up 4% to 5% on both Q-o-Q, Y-o-Y basis. Given the SMBC induction as the largest shareholder, do you envisage any change in the loan mix between Retail, Wholesale, Commercial as you move towards industry level growth?

On the growth mix, important to note is the Retail Disbursement growth because that's really an important controllable. From a Y-o-Y perspective, we are way above a 20% Y-o-Y growth. We do believe it should ultimately get normalized in the 20-25% range. What we are aiming to grow the Retail Book next year is actually should hit the double-digit growth, about 10% to 11%. If I look at the Corporate Book, that's already growing at about 20%. Commercial Banking continues to deliver about 18% growth. So net-net, the momentum is quite secular across all segments. Retail is catching up but may end up growing 10% to 11% next year. To that extent, there will be some mix compression but not material. We will anchor around a reasonably similar mix composition.

On the treasury, the bonds, the G-Sec had spiked during the quarter. They ended at more than 7% at quarter end. Do you had any MTM on investment book or if you can specify, was there any MTM loss either in the P&L or in AFS reserves or was there any offset?

As a market philosophy, we don't run very high open risk through our trading book, whether it's bonds or FX. The FX because of some of the changes through regulations has not had any material bearing on our mark-to-market. Yields did go up and that has had a bearing on our minimum SLR maintenance book, which is largely parked in HTM. We will wait and watch how the yields behave. There has been some P&L movement through the AFS reserve, but that's already fully baked into our CET-1 computation for December. Our CET-1 continues to be healthy from a 13.9%. We just consumed about 10 basis points for the March report. No material impact from the yield increase. We do believe that this should help us add to some yields in our investment book from a margin perspective.

If you have the number for AFS reserves, let's say, Q3 and maybe the Q4, that will give some sense on what was the movement in the AFS reserves?

The AFS reserve, we have a negative balance of about INR 100 crores as of March 31. The swing would be about INR 200 crores.

If you have the number for Credit Card Slippages and maybe PL Slippages, it looks like they are clearly improving. But if you have the number in absolute INR crores?

We'll pull that out. We might have interchange the numbers from your records. The Credit Card was about INR 133 crores and Personal Loans was about INR 180 crores. So that INR 186 crores Personal Loans is down to about INR 160 crores. And Credit Cards continued to be in the range of about INR 135 to 140 crores.

I wanted to understand a little on our branch expansion strategy. So for the full year, we have added around 82 new branches. I wanted to understand how the contribution of Retail Disbursements has been for the quarter from branches? And as we move to the next leg of growth, how are we looking at branch expansion, which locations we are prioritizing and how that aligns with the loan sub-segments we are trying to prioritize growth in?

We had laid out a guidance for the next 4 to 5 years with a plan of around 400 branches with an average of around 80 branches per annum, and we are on course of that. We opened around 82 branches last year. And we would be going ahead with that plan depending on if there is any upside available to do that. On the disbursements, our internal customer sourcing is approximately 50% of the overall disbursals we do. Out of that, approximately 60% actually comes from the branches through the branch customers. There have been some calibrated growth strategy on the unsecured loans. With the new rule engines and the new platform, when we look at increasing that share as well, this should also result in increasing the contribution coming from the branches. On the third part, when we look at our branch expansion, we typically look at three points. One, what is the Deposit growth happening in and around that pin code. Second, how is the credit growth happening. And third, how the quality of credit growth available in and around that Bank.

Just one quick follow-up question on RIDF. You did give out the rundown trajectory for the next 1-year. I wanted to understand how the mix would look like after 1-year? Would the decline be sort of linear or would it be accelerated post 1-year?

The reduction of RIDF from here on, for example, FY28 and FY29 will be equally split and then there are some maturities in FY30. So I would say it starts getting thinner in terms of the pace of reduction. So FY28 will be similar to FY27 potentially, but FY29, FY30 will start getting thinner.

And what would be the average targeted yield on the book?

For yield on advances that we've had as we look to exit March, that has been about 9.2%.

My question is like so this ROA, like I mean, FY27 and FY28, FY29 in the upcoming years. So, I think we hope we maintain 1% ROA and also like on top of that, that number will grow quarter-on-quarter on a yearly basis. Can you describe on that so that we will have good confidence that whatever we built so far, we will not lose the momentum?

On the question on ROA, we've said that March '26, we will look to exit with a 1% ROA. The most important thing is now to sustain this 1% ROA. Of course, there is a play that we also have from provision write-back of JC Flowers ARC. But what we have very emphatically worked upon internally is to say, internal, outside of the JC Flowers ARC write-backs, we will look to improve our ROA 25 to 50 basis points. It's a function of Net Interest Margin improvement, is a function of making sure we're disciplined on cost and containing the credit cost as well.

I just want your quick view on the West Asia war and its impact on the MSME segment, given that it's one of your key growth drivers. So where do you see that? Are you still planning to continue growing it? And how do you factor the stress over there?

We are proactively monitoring our portfolio, and this is the exercise that we've already started. It's good to report that all our clients, whether it's an MSME or larger clients have been managing well. They have not shown any signs of stress. But this is a space that we will continue to watch because it will have an impact on the inflation and there can be second order impact. We continue to monitor our portfolio closely and talk to our clients to understand the impact and the actions that they're going to take. Currently, since we have had a good client collections over the years, all our clients have been able to manage this crisis well.