Kotak Mahindra Bank to buy StanC India's Rs 4,100-crore personal loan book

Kotak Mahindra Bank on Friday announced that it will be acquiring foreign lender Standard Chartered Bank's Rs 4,100-crore personal loan portfolio for an undisclosed sum.

The private sector bank will be picking up the entire quantum of the foreign lender's personal loans classified as "standard advances" and the transaction is expected to be completed in three months, as per a statement.

Terming it as a "high-quality loan book", the statement from Kotak Mahindra Bank said the deal aligns with its strategy to "transform for scale and focus on customer-centric growth" and will help drive its retail assets growth.

"The high-quality loan book from Standard Chartered Bank allows KMB to build on its strength in the affluent customer segment and further reinforces its leadership in the retail lending space," the statement said.

The deal comes around two years after StanC's peer Citi sold its entire retail business to Kotak's larger rival Axis Bank . In April this year, Kotak Mahindra Bank was slapped with regulatory restrictions, which disallow it from onboarding any customer through the online and mobile banking channels.

The deal -- announced a day before the bank's September quarter earnings announcement-- also comes at a time when the regulator has been flagging risks on the unsecured loans like personal loans front and also increased risk weights to dissuade lenders from growing the books.

"India's unsecured lending market offers significant growth potential for Kotak, especially in the higher-end segment," KMB's product head for consumer bank Ambuj Chandna said.

The bank will be able to drive the growth sustainably on its risk management and technology-driven approach, Chandna said.

At its last earnings call last month, the KMB management said that it is keen to grow its unsecured loans in the mid-teens despite some blips in asset quality that it was experiencing.

StanC's head of wealth and retail banking Aditya Mandloi said the decision to sell the portfolio is in line with its focus to accelerate growth in the wealth, affluent and small and medium enterprises segment, and added that India continues to be a key market.

"India continues to be a key market for Standard Chartered network, with wealth and retail banking (WRB) and corporate and investment banking (CIB) as the cornerstones and we will continue to invest and grow in India," Mandloi said.

Mandloi assured a seamless transition to the customers, while KMB said that its technology expertise and customer service will ensure this task.

The Kotak Mahindra Bank scrip closed 0.32 per cent up at Rs 1,869.80 apiece on the BSE on Friday against a 0.27 per cent gain on the benchmark.