Thank you, Michelle, and good evening, everyone. On behalf of Ambit Capital, I would like to welcome you all to Q4...

Am I audible now?

Okay. Thank you, Michelle, and good evening, everyone.

On behalf of Ambit Capital, I would like to welcome you all to Q4 and full year FY26 earnings call of Ujjivan Small Finance Bank. We have along with us Mr.

Sanjeev Nautiyal, Managing Director and CEO; Ms. Carol Furtado, Executive Director; and the senior management team of Ujjivan Small Finance Bank.

I will now hand over the call to Mr. Sanjeev Nautiyal, Managing Director and CEO, for his opening remarks.

Over to you, sir.

Thank you, Jignesh. Good evening, and thank you all for joining us today for Ujjivan SFB's quarter four and financial year 2026 earnings call.

Please do note I will be referring to year-on-year comparisons with Q4 financial year '25 and quarter-on-quarter with Q3 financial year '26. The Indian economy continues to exhibit resilience as reflected in stable GDP growth outlook.

This is supported by strong domestic fundamentals, government initiatives and interventions supported by adequate liquidity. On the industry front, overall bank credit recorded strong growth of 16%, reaching ₹219 lakh crores, while deposits increased by 13.4 percentages to ₹268 lakh crore as of March 31st, 2026.

The Reserve Bank of India has kept policy rates unchanged at 5.25% while maintaining a neutral stance, reflecting a balanced approach to support growth while retaining flexibility amid evolving risks. CPI provisional inflation for March '26 came in at 3.40 percentages, up 19 basis points over February '26, and RBI expects headline inflation to average around 4.6 percentages for financial year '27.

We do not expect rates to be increased unless there is a sharp surge in inflation above the RBI target range. Real GDP growth for financial year '26-'27 is expected around 6.9 percentages as per RBI.

The projection faces downside risks from geopolitical tensions, such as the West Asia conflict, oil price volatility, supply chain disruptions, and super El Niño weather phenomenon, fueling inflation. GDP expansion is likely to be supported by continued government capital expenditure and a recovery in private consumption.

I will commence with our financial year 2026 journey before I delve into quarterly performance. We received communication from the RBI on 13th April on our application for voluntary transition to a universal bank.

The regulator, while returning our application, has acknowledged our ongoing efforts towards diversification of our loan portfolio. We shall continue to engage with the RBI and reapply as per their constructive guidance at an appropriate time, demonstrating a diversified portfolio.

We remain committed to our universal banking aspirations. During the year, we continued to widen and deepen our board and management.

At the board, Mr. Aniruddha Paul brings expertise in complex transformation, innovation in AI and data, process, and technology.

In financial year '26 till December '25, management additions of Mr. Umesh Arora, Mr.

Deepak Agarwal, and Mrs. Vijayalakshmi Muddu has strengthened business, strategy, and audit functions respectively.

In quarter four financial year '26, with the appointment of Mr. Pankaj Gupta as Chief Digital Officer and Mr.

Mohammad Shakeel Khan as Head of Collections, our digital capabilities and collection portfolio are further strengthened. Let me now enumerate a few important milestones achieved in financial year '26.

Deposits and gross loan book each have crossed ₹40,000 crore, taking balance sheet across ₹50,000 crore mark. Retail deposits crossed ₹30,000 crore and savings accounts crossed ₹10,000 crores.

Housing vertical, comprising of affordable housing and micro mortgage, crossed ₹10,000 crore, while MSME and FIG crossed ₹3,000 crore each. Total secured advances portfolio crossed ₹20,000 crore.

MicroBanking assets, GL and IL combined, grew past ₹20,000 crore after large contraction in financial year '25 and also in financial year '24. Q4 concludes another important year for Ujjivan, marked by strong execution, improving operating performance, and continued strategic progress, with the outcomes in line with the guidance at the start of financial year '26.

We continue to see strong momentum in deposits growth. Total deposits stood at ₹45,668 crores, reflecting YoY growth of 21.4 percentages and 8.2% QoQ, while CASA deposits grew higher, leading to improvement in CASA ratio to 28.6 percentages.

Retail TD plus CASA stood at ₹31,995 crore, contributing 70% of total deposits. Cost of funds for the quarter stood at 7 percentages and for the year stood at 7.2.

In a period marked with tight liquidity, we maintained CD ratio at 89% with comfortable liquidity reflected in LCR at 142 percentages as of March 31st, 2026. Focus remains on strengthening granular and retail-driven deposit franchise and further improve on the CASA ratio.

On the gross loan book during the year, we continue to progress towards building a more balanced and diversified loan portfolio with a clear focus on increasing the share of secured assets. The secured portfolio now contributes 49.4% of the overall book, up from 43.5% YoY and 48.1% QoQ.

This transition positions us well for more stable and sustainable growth going forward. Disbursements during Q4 FY26 were the highest ever at ₹9,811 crores, up 32.1 percentages YoY and 18.3 percentages QoQ, reflecting strong demand across segments.

The gross loan book reached ₹40,655 crores, growing 26.6 percentages YoY and 9.7 percentages QoQ. The secured portfolio scaled meaningfully to ₹20,079 crores, up 43.5 percentages YoY and 12.6 percentages QoQ.

Within secured segments, housing portfolio continued to demonstrate strong traction with growth of 43.4 percentages YoY and 9.6 percentages QoQ, while the MSME portfolio witnessed robust growth of 57.9% YoY and 12.8% QoQ, driven by strong execution on the formal and semi-formal focused MSME strategy. We also saw strong momentum across newer business lines, with gold loans, vehicle finance, and agri banking scaling up rapidly by 292 percentages, 101 percentages, and 126 percentages YoY respectively.

I am pleased to note these three newer lines now contribute around 6% of our loan mix against 3% in financial year 2025. In MicroBanking, as guided earlier, we witnessed healthy disbursement growth of 11.9% QoQ to an all-time high of ₹5,245 crores.

During the quarter, MB portfolio grew to ₹20,709 crore, up 6.9%. Implementation of guardrails has stabilized portfolio and durable demand returned.

The individual loan portfolio continued to grow steadily while group loan growth remained calibrated. The new customer addition for financial year '26 was at 5.4 lakhs.

Coming to bank-level asset quality. We have seen stable performance with improving trends across portfolios during the quarter.

At a bank level, GNPA stood at 2.27 percentages with sequential moderation in PAR, reflecting improving borrower behavior and the effectiveness of our collection efforts. Overall, portfolio quality remained robust with credit cost improving to 2.2 percentages of average gross loan book for financial year '26, down by 20 basis points YoY, and a visible moderation in slippages during the period.

PCR improved to 81 percentages, providing adequate buffer. Bucket X collection efficiency in MicroBanking remains strong at 99.8 percentages in March '26 and above 99.7 percentages across Q4, underscoring disciplined execution on the ground.

Within the secured portfolio, asset quality continues to remain robust, with housing and MSME portfolios showing healthy performance and improving delinquency trends. Our financial outcome for Q4 reflects near-normal portfolio and operational performance.

Total income for FY26 stood at ₹8,039 crores, up 11.6 percentages YoY, while quarterly total income came in at ₹2,186 crores, up 18.6 percentages YoY, reflecting continued momentum. We delivered strong NII growth of 26.4 percentages YoY and 9.2 percentages QoQ to ₹1,092 crore, driven by robust loan growth and a stable product yield.

Net interest margin for the quarter improved further to 8.5 percentages. This was largely due to reducing cost of funds, stable yields, and optimal liquidity utilization.

Other income remained healthy, driven by processing fee and insurance income. Other income to ATA for FY26 is at 2.2 percentages.

Interest expenses were well managed through active liability management, while OPEX to ATA for financial year '26 came in at 6.4 percentages and cost-to-income for financial year '26 at 65.6 percentages. Net profit for financial year '26 came in at ₹693 crore with ROA and ROE at 1.4 percentages and 10.9 percentages respectively.

The exit quarter PAT stood at ₹282 crore. ROA and ROE were at 2.1 percentages and 17.2 percentages respectively.

Future FY27 and beyond: for FY27, we plan to accelerate both branch and digital infrastructure in line with asset growth objective of around 25%. Current financial year will focus on branch addition of about 20%, keeping with our growth plans for the current financial year.

Our digital and AI and analytics investments will continue to better align with our existing and new customer needs. Strengthening our data foundation through cloud-led platform integrated architecture will ensure we deliver on a truly connected bank, thus augmenting our customer acquisition and retention through their life cycle.

Guidance FY27: grow the advances by around 25%; expect credit cost to moderate to 1.4 percentages to 1.5 percentages of the average GLB; reach ROA of around 1.6 percentages. As I conclude, we remain committed to profitable growth with focus on investments in distribution, technology, risk, and multiproduct infrastructure.

Additionally, to maintain adequate buffer over the regulatory capital threshold, our board has approved raising of equity capital for an aggregate amount not exceeding ₹2,000 crore. This capital infusion would propel growth for the medium term.

I now hand the call to the moderator to commence the Q&A. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Hi. Thank you for the opportunity.

Congrats on a good set of numbers. My first question is that, see, we have an exit ROA of more than 2% and for the next year we are guiding an ROA of around 1.6.

Is it because you said that we'll open more branches, that is fine, but will it be our OPEX grows at 40-50% because that'd be the only line item which will probably increase and pressurize our ROA? That's my first question.

I think, Digant, as I said, we would be entailing investments on the lines that I indicated, which is on tech, digital, AI, branch expansion. All these expenses or investments would actually lead to an ROA which I indicated.

Therefore, I would not see anything unusual about our numbers.

Okay. Because see the credit cost at this quarter rate is around 1.1, we are guiding for around 1.4, you don't see anything adverse there as well, right?

It's just the higher investment which is pushing the ROA down next year in our guidance.

Digant, this is Sridhar here. The credit cost you're referring to is on DuPont.

What we are reporting is on a average GLB. That's the only difference.

Mr. Nautiyal will give the further response to your question.

Right.

Digant, we have got the guidance of Reserve Bank of India. Obviously, gradually we will be scaling up the secured book also, and therefore, the configuration will alter and change, and that would also have a bearing on the return on the assets.

Okay. Perfect, I understand that.

Just wanted to see we are at 51% in MicroBanking. We'll not deliberately slow it down, right?

We may increase the other part faster or how are we thinking about this particular to get Oh.

Absolutely. We continue to do the micro finance business as we do, and also see that the ratio of the secured book grows faster.

That is how we are going to calibrate the two sides of the loan books.

Okay. Perfect.

Thank you so much for the clarifications and wish you best of luck.

Hi, sir. Thank you for giving me the opportunity and congrats on a great set of numbers.

My first question was on the growth front. While we have highlighted 25% growth on the overall book, what would be the segmental growth aspiration in segments like MicroBanking as well as home loan and the other segments that we have launched recently?

That is my question number one. The other question is on the margin front.

I think the earlier participant highlighted OPEX being one of the aspects, but would it also be margins given that we would be focusing more on secured side and therefore, from our exit margin of 4Q, we would see whole year FY27 margin coming down? These are my two questions, sir.

As far as the MicroBanking business is concerned, we would be growing it at a less than 10%, I would say a higher single digit number, and correspondingly the secured book would grow at a much faster pace, and this combination is going to lead to the return on assets that we have given as a guidance at 1.6

percentages. Sir, on the margin front, NIM Margin,

NIM, I think the second question of yours was on the NIM side?

Right, sir. Right.

All right. What we are saying is the NIM for this year would be at the same level of the exiting quarter, right?

Close to that number. Okay.

We will get closer to 8.4-8.5% is what we're guiding for.

Yes, please.

Got it, sir. All right.

Thank you, sir. I'll come in the queue for more questions.

Thank you and good luck for the next quarter.

Good afternoon, sir, and congratulations on a good set of numbers. Sir, just to understand this guidance a little bit better, you are saying that the NIMs would remain at the same level as exit quarter, which is Q4.

What kind of OPEX growth are we envisaging in this year? Hello?

Our cost-to-income ratio, despite the investments that we are going to do, will continue to remain at the same percentages as we had in the preceding financial year, which is 24 '25-'26. You would expect to see the same cost-to-income ratio presiding as at 31st March, 2027.

Okay. Sir, in the absence of not much of an increase in cost to income also, just wanted to understand this 50 basis point compression in ROA, that would be caused by which particular line item in your P&L?

The investments and new projects would be on branches, on efficiency enhancements, and the others, which are about marketing and new training programs, efficiency would be on IT projects, AI investments, low-cost channels, and branches about infrastructure and staff costs.

Okay. Sir.

I'll maybe take it offline to understand a little bit better. Just secondly, on the secured side, we have seen a higher yield for the overall book on the secured side.

Given the plans for next year, how are we seeing this book behaving in terms of the secured book yield? What would be the main drivers here?

This would remain more or less same as we have seen in the financial year '25-'26.

Okay. This year we have seen a steady sort of a increase in the secured book yield.

Do we expect now to stabilize it at this level or how do you see it?

Yes, we seem to be having the capacity to stabilize them at the same level as you've seen in the last quarter, right? In fact, in the third and the fourth quarter, the enhancement in the yield which we have seen generally would continue in the financial year '26-'27 as well.

Okay. Okay.

Finally, sir, on this fundraising, when do you plan to do it? Will it happen this quarter itself or what is the plan there?

Our plan is to do it in the second half of the current financial year depending on the suitability of the circumstances.

Okay. Sir, final one question if I may.

Sir, given this RBI guidance, is there any specific number in terms of the secured book mix that we would want to reach to? Because, generally, given the degrowth in a microfinance industry that we have seen, I think normal microfinance growth could be higher than a single-digit number.

Do we have a plan let's say by when we want to reapply and hence we want to sort of not grow that book at a normative number and grow only at a single-digit number, or do we have a mix in plan for the next year that we want to reach this mix in secured? If you can throw some more color on how are you thinking given that you guys want to reapply?

RBI does not share or direct or guide a particular ratio. We will have to devise our own means of arriving at a particular ratio by an appropriate time before we contemplate applying to the Reserve Bank of India for transition to universal banking license.

We will continue to strengthen and enhance the secured book in a manner that the journey is palatable, maintaining the profitability underpinnings, and to also ensure that the ratio is better than what we had shown to the Reserve Bank of India. This will be a self-discovery, I would say, but certainly, we will calibrate and decide at what ratio, by what time we need to abide by so that we are in a position to apply to Reserve Bank of India.

For this year, I can only guide that our secured portfolio would be a little upwards of 56

percentages. Okay.

Thank you, sir, and all the best.

Hi. Thank you for taking my question.

Two questions. One is your guidance on margins.

When you say margins will be stable from here, and the secured book would reach 56% from 49% from 49% 49%, yeah. If I look at the yields, most of the secured book yields are lower.

I understand you have some pricing power with your customer set, but still most of the secured book yields are lower than your MFI and individual loan yields. How do you plan to protect your margin with such a sharp change in loan mix?

At the same time, do you see any further cuts in your TD, SA rates? Do you think you have room or you are actually going to have to increase it a bit because of the competitive scenario?

Just wanted to understand your margin guidance in the context of these two things. The second question is on OPEX.

If I split your OPEX into business costs, where you are pushing up your secured book and trying to change your mix, versus any kind of technology upgrade or system upgrade or anything else that the RBI may have asked you to do as part of your conversion into a bank, how would you split it? The kind of OPEX growth you're seeing this year, what would it be driven by?

Those are the two questions.

I think on the margin side, we will continue to see some release on the cost of deposits side. We will benefit on the cost of funds side, that also needs to be factored in.

Also because of the health of the microfinance portfolio now in its prime shape, the reversals of the interest on account of the NPAs would also be lessened, much lessened. The release of the cost of funds or the cost of deposits is also what we are going to witness.

These would be the Just to be sure,

in terms of your cost of deposit coming off, how much more repricing would be left?

A benefit of around 30 basis points.

Is still left?

Yeah.

To occur. Okay.

In terms of interest reversal, now I guess that would already be there in the 4Q numbers, right? Because now your PAR has gone down quite substantially.

Do you see further sharp improvements over there or how

Not sharp improvements, but at least the new book or the new exposure will behave very properly, and therefore we will not have any stress on that account.

Yes, sir. That would be in your 4Q numbers.

In your 4Q numbers,

you are already reflecting a 22.5, maybe it goes up by 10-20 bps. Right.

Right. Right.

The mix impact still remains the main issue.

Right.

How will your NIM be stable? That's, again, maybe 20-30 bps improvement from the cost of funds side, that will be enough to offset the mix changes, right?

We also have the two-wheeler and the proposed used car product that we are going to launch. The two-wheeler has a substantive yields sitting on it.

Then we also have the gold loan, which is upward of 14 percentages, and micro mortgages, which are at 19.8 percentages. These three business verticals would continue to support us on the yield side, and the other secured businesses, which are the housing and the MSME, would continue to maintain the yields that they have shown, and basically help us to maintain the NIM overall with the support of reduced cost of funds that I spoke about.

Got it, sir. Clear.

The OPEX question?

On the OPEX, I would request you if you can get in touch offline to have more details about it. Sure.

Got it. Thank you.

Hi, sir. Thank you for the opportunity and congratulations on a good set of numbers.

Sir, my first question is on the deposit front. See, broadly, your deposit growth has been slightly lagging the overall advances growth.

However, the CASA ratio has been improving consistently. Broadly, how do you see your CASA ratio for the next year, number one?

Is there any possibility, or you have taken any price hike on the TD side, because a lot of competitors have indicated that they have taken some price hike on the term deposit side. That is question number one.

Number two is on the gold portfolio. Gold, I was just checking that average ticket size on a YoY basis for your book has gone up by 60% but the yields are also inching up marginally.

I have seen there is a 30 basis point increase in the gold loan portfolio yield on a QoQ basis. Can you just help us understand what is your strategy with respect to the gold loan book?

The last is broadly on the asset quality piece. Is there anything which you can indicate on a qualitative basis for your customer segment in terms of any issues they are facing from this West Asia conflict or any sort of early warning indicators that you are noticing in your portfolio?

These were the three questions from my side. All

right. Hi.

Hitendra here. If you look at our CASA ratio has improved by YoY 1.75% and QoQ 1.28%.

We are at 28.6%. We expect it to increase further.

It's very difficult to give exact number, but it'll be around 30% will be the CASA ratio. Our focus will continue with CASA, but yes, overall book will continue to grow.

Hi, Kaushik. This is Vibhas.

On gold loan, you're right. Our ticket size has increased during the financial year.

At the same time, our yields have also increased. Ticket size naturally has increased because when we started gold loan initially, we were experimenting and working with mostly microfinance customers.

Today, as gradually we have increased focus on open market and leads from other verticals as well, leading to higher ticket size. At the same time, during the year, we have also adjusted interest rates for lower ticket size loans positively that has impacted yield positively.

On your question, it was about CD ratio, we have basically tried to pivot ourselves around 88% to 89% CD ratio, which helps us to manage with a lower deposit growth that came in the last year, and the CASA ratio is what we are going to achieve is somewhere around 20- 29% 29% to 30 percentages. The CASA ratio would be around 29% to 30 percentages.

Okay.

Sir,

just continuing on this. Sir, just checking that are you building in any price hike or have you taken anything on the deposit front?

As of now, we are not contemplating any change in deposit rate. We'll continue.

We'll watch this space closely, and if anything happens, we'll calibrate accordingly. As far as the risks to the various businesses on account of the Middle East crisis, what we would like to say is that our portfolio is overwhelmingly domestic, granular, and retail in nature, and we do not have any foreign currency lending exposure, no exposure to oil, gas, defense, aviation, and therefore our customer segment is more or less insulated from first order geopolitical disruption.

We are mindful of the situation and therefore we have taken steps to ensure that we refresh our scenario frameworks across all major verticals. We have stress tested our portfolio.

Origination posture is calibrated geography by geography, and we have a heightened monitoring system in place. For example, for two-wheelers, used vehicle, MSME working capital, and monitoring has been tighten, and with strong provisioning and capital buffer, this provides us a very meaningful absorption capacity for any second order impacts.

Okay. Thank you, sir.

That's it from my side.

Hi. Thank you for the opportunity.

Am I audible?

Yes, please.

Yeah. Okay.

Sir, I just have two, three questions. First on the ROA front.

I understand what you're trying to say is that since secured book will grow at a much faster pace, there could be some pressure on the yields, but at the same time, it will be likely compensated by the cost of funds and that's why the margins are going to remain steady state. Is that the correct understanding?

Yes, please.

Then which are the levers where from current state of 2% ROA, you are guiding for about 1.6% ROA for FY27? What could really drive ROA compression from the current exit ROA?

That's my first question. Second question is since earlier you had guided for a 70-30 mix between secured and unsecured piece over the next five years with almost 5-5 percentage of change, now will there be any change in that timelines considering the RBI's decision and will there be any change in strategy in that?

Lastly, from the 2,000 crore cap raise front, could any sort of inorganic acquisition of secured book be on the cards? These are my three questions, sir.

Yeah. Yeah.

I can hear you.

We have no plans at this point in time for any inorganic acquisition, and we are maintaining the 1.6% at this point in time. These are the numbers that we have worked out.

If there is any upside, that could be possible.

Okay. Basically, if I understand correctly, margins are going to remain steady state, and so you are just guiding it on your estimates the 1.6%, but the current OPEX and credit cost also, you don't see any material deterioration that could lead to any compression at an ROA level, right?

Would that be the right understanding?

Yes, please.

Okay. Sorry, sir.

I just missed this part on your timelines about the 70-30 mix between secured and unsecured if you could repeat that.

We have broadly constructed our secured and unsecured ratio for this year. For the remaining years, which is '27, '28, '29, we are still in the process of deciding the configuration, and we would perhaps come back to you after a short period.

Sure. Got it.

Sir, just trying to understand this one thing. You already have significant CAR on your book, you are fairly well capitalized.

Then what would be the rationale behind having a fresh cap raise, since you are already well capitalized and you can grow organically also this well? Just trying to understand the logic behind that.

We have already guided for a 25% growth on the asset side per year, and our board mandated threshold is 20%. We also need growth capital to fund our appetite for the next 3 years, and therefore we think this would be the right time to fund ourselves and to be replete with the capital that we would need for fueling our growth for the future.

Understood, sir. This is very, very helpful.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Hi, team. Good evening.

Two or three questions from my side. Firstly, on the CASA deposit book, good to see the progress there in spite of cutting rates.

The question is, do you see any further scope to cut the pricing on TDs as well as SA deposits and getting them closer to where the mid-tier banks are? That is one.

Secondly, on the MFI book, is there room to increase the pricing there, because we are still let's say at the lower end of the pricing of the market in general? Last one is a data keeping one, if you can share the MFI slippages for the quarter.

Hi, Ashlesh. This is Hitendra.

On a saving account side, we have changed some interest rate on a higher buckets, okay? We're expecting close to 25 to 30 bps reduction on SA cost of fund.

We have no plan as of now to reprice our retail TD or bulk TD. We'll wait and watch this space and we'll be competitive in the market.

If anything happens in the market, we'll calibrate, but as of now, we have no plan to change our interest rate on deposits.

Hi, Ashlesh. This is Vibhas.

On similar lines, as Hitendra mentioned, in MFI book also, we are not thinking of changing interest rates at this point of time. We want to hold on to what we are charging at this point of time.

Understood, sir. Thank you.

If you can share the slippages number for MFI for the quarter?

Hi, this is Gaurav. Slippages for MFI around group loan individual loan put together would be in the range of ₹130 crores.

Okay. Thank you.

Those were all the questions. All the best.

Hi. Good evening.

Very good numbers. I just have one question on this overall mix changing in the current year.

We demonstrated pretty strong recovery in microfinance business in recent quarters. Now we're talking about growing the book by 8% to 9% in the next year, FY27.

How do you restrain growth? We have a seasoned leadership team who has navigated the cycle very well and you also have a large on-ground team in MFI.

Then would you just limit customer acquisition to pull down growth or to pull down the current momentum? If you do that, wouldn't it be difficult to retain good people in the microfinance business?

Hi, Rajeev. We were slow, actually, we were degrowing our microfinance book post Guardrail 1.0.

Even after Guardrail 2.0, our customer base was degrowing. The growth of this year would have two components.

One, the new customer acquisition, and the second is the repeat loans. Now most of the customer acquisition that we have done would not be eligible for repeat loans, which is why you will see a slightly lesser growth this year as compared to what it could have been if we had done customer acquisition in the last cycle.

That is the reason why you will see a slightly lower growth. It may not cross maybe 10 10-11%, single digit, a higher single digit means around 9-10%.

It is on account of the repeat loans that this is happening. No, but

Ashish, you will also have a lot of space for acquiring new customers as the guardrails impact kind of is going behind us and the eligibility of the customer pool who were restricted by the guardrails in the industry, become eligible for loans, then the obvious lever to kind of not grow faster is to limit the new customer acquisition.

Rajeev, the way we've been looking at growing our businesses, approximately 25-odd percent new-to-bank customers and 75% repeat. We don't see a very big swing there in favor of the new-to-bank in the coming financial year.

A higher growth would mean that we may have to actually cross 40-45% new-to-bank. That's something that we would be a little cautious about doing.

Maybe 25 could go up to 30, but certainly not more than that.

Got it. Thank you.

Best of luck.

Yeah. Good evening, everyone.

Thanks for the opportunity. Is my voice audible?

Audible.

Yeah. Just my first question, one more clarification on the ROA guidance.

Are we building in any contingency buffer to be built up next year, that is FY27, so that when ECL implements happen, we can kind of reapply for the universal banking license?

By contingency buffer, you would say additional provisions, Sailesh?

Yes. Yeah.

Strengthening the balance sheet more.

No, we don't have a plan to that effect, Sailesh, for the next financial year.

Okay. The second question was with respect to SA buckets.

I remember Jan you had indicated that we had taken cuts in the SA bucket, and you alluded to that as well, right? When I see the cost of SA remains to be quarter-on-quarter flattish at 5.2%.

Just wanted to understand that part. I guess even in April, we have taken one more SA rate cut, right?

Why it is not getting reflected in the numbers?

Am I audible? Hi,

Shailesh. It's Hitendra here.

Yeah. Our cost of fund if you look at SA exit March was 5.21%, okay?

What rate we have changed in April, we will see impact coming now. Around 25 to 30 bps reduction will happen as we go along from here.

We had taken one in the month of Jan as well, right? If my memory serves right.

No, this rate cut what we have taken, I'm talking April.

Okay. In Jan, we had not taken the SA rate cut?

SA we had taken, that advantage came. If you look at January, cost of fund was around five sorry, it was 5.25, which came down to 5.20.

Okay. It's 5 5 bps 5 bps [gain?]

. Minimal impact over there.

That is what impacted. Fair enough.

That's right.

This time, we have taken rate cut on our middy book where my maximum book lies, close to 33% of my book lies in 10 lakhs to 10 crores. There we have reduced the rate, we'll see higher impact this time.

Right.

Fair enough. That's all from my side.

Best of luck. Thank you.

Hello, sir. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Most of my questions have been answered, but just one confirmation because I may have missed something. Sir, can our secured lending continue to grow at 35% to 45% while maintaining a low GNPA?

Hi, Mehul. So,

Yes,

sir. The growth of our secured book is coming from both our established products, which is affordable housing and MSME, and new businesses which we have started in the last 3 years: micro mortgages, gold loans, two-wheeler, agriculture loans.

We've also built a book on working capital, that's about 600-700 crores already. When we are building our book, the newer customer acquisition is a very diversified income profile.

Working capital book for us is about a crore average ticket size, LAP is about 60-65 lakhs, and then there are the other businesses, two-wheeler, micro mortgages, which are at the lower end. On the secured side, as far as GNPA is concerned, while the book is now seasoning, but at the same time, we've put adequate guardrails around maintaining our collection efficiencies.

Micro mortgages, two-wheeler, all of them are above 99.5% on Bucket X. Affordable housing, MSME, they're all at 99.77, 99.75.

In terms of GNPA, I think we are broadly maintaining the asset quality as far as the secured benchmarks are concerned.

Sir, can we expect to grow in that range, 35% to 45%?

Yes, 40% is something that we have already planned, 10% on unsecured, 40% on secured, and therefore, 25% average.

Right. Sir, my next question is on the timeline for going back to RBI on the banking license.

I may have missed the commentary, but if you can help me with anything.

As in the initial part, I had enumerated that Reserve Bank of India has only given us the guidance to improve further the secured unsecured ratio, and that is not a number that RBI guides or directs. We will have to see how much this ratio can be delivered, and what is the appropriate time.

We will have to sit down and decide and build a plan, and based on an appropriate ratio being achieved by us, with a further guidance in the next few years, we'll be in a position to take the call. Obviously, that's not going to happen immediately.

Sir, what does this do to our 2 to 3 years road map? Because now we may have some road map based on the license being granted, and I'm not saying it's a setback, but I'm just trying to understand what will be the changing strategy for the next 3 years?

For '27, we have given the guidance, and as I said, we are in the process of building the plan for the next 2-3 years, and after finalization of our plan, we would certainly be sharing that with you all at some point in time in the very near future.

Right, sir. Can we expect in the next couple of

Okay. Thank you so much.

Yeah. Congratulations to the entire team of Ujjivan for posting excellent set of earnings, actually.

Now my, sir, first question was related to our OPEX. You highlighted in your opening commentary that we are guiding for around 20% increase in the branches, actually.

As on March '26, we are at around 776 branches. Is this safe to assume that we are likely to open at around a 140 branches in next year or maybe in the next two years?

Can you please clarify that?

Broadly, yes.

In FY27, we are going to open 140 branches?

Yes, please.

Fine. My second question, sir, was related to our deposit growth.

Deposit growth has lagged in this quarter by around 200 bps, actually, as compared to our advances growth. Now, going ahead, your guidance for CASA is at around 30%.

We are not assuming very strong growth in CASA, even though in this quarter it has been actually very good on the number front. Now my question was related to that, that how are we see basically on the TD growth?

Are you assuming at least a 25% plus growth in this quarter and what exactly measures have you taken? Are you banking on some new geographies for such kind of healthy growth, or what is your strategy going on the liability front?

Hi, Sagar. First this 30% what we said was a CASA ratio, not the CASA growth rate.

Yes, sir, CASA ratio,

yes. Yeah.

Okay. Say our deposit book will grow in the line of our credit growth, okay?

We will not lag here, and if you look at our growth in deposit has been steady since July-August, okay? We had deliberately slowed down on deposit for three months because we had some excess liquidity.

Thereafter, we are seeing a very healthy growth of deposit, and our focus will to continue to book a retail TD book than a bulk side. I hope I answered your query.

Okay.

Yes, sir, certainly. Now my last question, sir, was related to asset quality.

Asset quality in terms of GL, now the entire microfinance segment is doing well and it's actually rebounding, and I hope Ujjivan also does well as is especially in the IL loan. Is it safe to assume that the last two years, the kind of growth that we got at the secured front, and that is our ratio between secured to unsecured, relatively went very quickly towards secured growth.

Now, over the next two years till FY28, is it safe to assume that our book will look like a 55-45, 55 towards secured and 45 towards unsecured? What can be the ratio that you can write for, sir?

As Mr. Nautiyal in his initial comments said, we will end March '27 somewhere in the range of 56-44.

Yes, while you said 55-45, that is roughly the number that was suggested earlier.

Okay. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, and all the best for future. I will connect offline for more.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Hello. Good evening, sir.

Thank you so much for taking my question. I'm

Hello. Hi, is this better?

Hello? Hi.

Firstly, congratulations on a great set of results, sir. Sir, sorry to harp upon the questions that a lot of people have asked, but we are saying our NIMs will be around the same level, our OPEX will be around the same level, and our credit cost is similar to Q4.

Then why will our ROA decrease from 2 to 1.6? I am just trying to find that a bit hard to reconcile, right?

Right, sir? If everything is same, then ROA should be similar to Q4, right?

Is there anything wrong with that assumption, sir? Hello?

Hello?

This is Sridhar here.

Yeah.

Darshan, you rightly said this is the fourth or fifth time we've got this question on the call. What you are not catching right now is the fact that we are being conservative on both our OPEX and our credit cost, and our guidance is coming from that place.

We do appreciate there are certain dynamics which may play out on a couple of our key products, and covering for eventualities is where you're seeing the ROA at the guided level. We will certainly update you as we see any meaningful change in this particular number.

We appreciate the sensitivity of the same, and that's where we would like to leave it for now.

Fair enough, sir. Sir, just wanted to understand few of your peers was saying that they are seeing some kind of intense competition in terms of deposits.

Do we feel that the 30 basis points improvement that we are hoping for, that can come under some kind of pressure because deposits are just a bit hard to get right now? What are your comments on that, sir?

Hi. Hitendra here.

As of now, we don't see any stress on deposit side. This is going as per our expectation, and going forward, we will be maintaining the same level of growth.

Fair enough. That's it from my side.

Thank you so much, sir. All the best.

I once again thank all the participants for their time and interest. We at Ujjivan SFB remain focused on delivering on profitable growth while we build an enduring institution.

Please reach out to our IR team for any queries that you may have. I would finally like to give the guidance of NIM around 8.5 percentages.

The OPEX to ATA ratio would be 20 to 30 basis points above financial year '26 due to the investments that we are making for the future growth, and thereafter these would decrease. Hence, the base case ROA of 1.6 percentages.

Thank you. Thank you very much.