Bob World curbs not denting business, says MD & CEO Debdatta Chand

Bank of Baroda (BoB) has said that regulatory curbs to on-boarding new customers on its mobile banking app ‘bob world’ will not impact business.

 

It added that the loan book will grow in line with guidance for the current financial year.

Debdatta Chand, managing director and chief executive, BoB, said, “The bank has already started to work on the corrective steps. We need to comply with some of the action points, which the regulator has given. As far as the processes are concerned, they have been corrected, strengthened and made robust. There are multiple checks now. We need to satisfy the RBI on this.” He, however, did not give a timeline for the entire process.

About impact of customer acquisition (asset and liabilities), he said bob world is a service.

In terms of customer acquisition and account opening, its share was very less (3-4 per cent) earlier also. There are multiple channels, including branch banking to on-board customers.

Normally, because of technical reasons or regulatory action, if one channel goes down, other channels pick up significantly. That is what we are seeing now and it is business as usual for the bank, the CEO pointed out.

“We continue to maintain guidance of growing 1-2 per cent above the industry on overall loan book and need to grow retail book at 3-4 per cent higher than industry average. Thus, the overall loan book would expand at 14-16 per cent for FY24,” he said at an analysts’ call after announcement of the results (for Q2).

BoB’s net profit rose by 28.4 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) to Rs 4,253 crore in Q2. Advances grew 17.3 per cent to Rs 10.24 trillion in Q2. Retail loans surged 22.2 per cent to Rs 1.93 trillion.