Kotak Mahindra Bank Limited

Kotak Mahindra Bank Limited

430.50
INR
-6.50
(-1.49%)
3.52TMarket Cap

Q3 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptJanuary 24, 2026

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Kotak Mahindra Bank Q3 FY26 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes.

Should you need assistance during this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star and then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded.

I now hand the conference over to Mr. Ashok Vaswani, Managing Director and CEO of Kotak Mahindra Bank.

Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Ashok Vaswani

Thank you. Thank you so much, Operator.

Good evening. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us.

Before I begin, let me welcome Anup Saha, our new WTD designate. Anup brings over three decades of vast experience and domain expertise across many fields, including retail finance, analytics, risk, collections, and financial service operations.

He will oversee our consumer bank, data analytics, and marketing verticals. His addition strengthens our leadership team and accelerates our ability to execute at scale.

Moving on to today's agenda, I'll make some opening remarks. Devang will cover the numbers in detail, Pranav the deposit franchise, Vyomesh consumer assets, Manish commercial banking, Paritosh wholesale banking and institutional businesses, and finally, Jaideep will update you on our subs.

Let me first talk a little bit about the macroeconomic environment. The global landscape has become more volatile.

Geopolitical tensions, trade and tariff uncertainties have weighed on global investor confidence. While there seems to be a high level of confidence to get a trade deal with the EU, the absence of a final trade agreement with the US continues to add to this uncertainty.

We have seen unprecedented strengthening of gold and silver, and outflows from India by FIIs to other markets that are perceived to be more attractive to foreign investors. However, the Indian economy continues to demonstrate strong and stable growth.

GDP growth continues to be resilient with a positive outlook. This is supported by several enabling actions like the RBI's repo rate cuts and GST rate rationalization.

3Q also saw an uptick in growth, led by the usual festive demand. Rural India overall looks stable, supported by good monsoons.

The rupee weakness has partly offset tariff impacts, but has also affected foreign flows and liquidity. With respect to capital flows, while FIIs have been net sellers, domestic institutional investors have provided support with around $24 billion in inflows in Q3 FY26, reinforcing the savers to investors trend.

This is also evident in the strong IPO pipeline expected for calendar 2026. In the banking sector specifically, system credit growth has been healthy, but the flows into commodities and capital markets are putting more pressure on low-cost deposits.

There is enhanced volatility seen in the banking sector liquidity. While benchmark rates are reduced, longer-term credit yields have firmed up.

Within this context, coming to Kotak, we remain focused on our strategy to scale responsibly. This discipline is reflected in our quarterly performance.

In the bank, net advances grew 16% YoY. This is in line with our stated philosophy of growing our advances in the range of 1.5 to 2 times nominal GDP growth.

We have seen consistent growth of around 4% per quarter for the last three quarters of this financial year. Average deposits grew 15% year-on-year.

We have been focusing on granular CASA growth. This is on the back of our focused segment strategy, and I will come to that shortly.

We called out unsecured retail loans earlier. We said we would grow gradually and responsibly, with the unsecured assets growing in absolute terms in the first instance, and that's exactly what we have done and will continue to do so.

The bank's NIM continues to be healthy at 4.54%, supported by our low cost of funds. Credit costs, as indicated previously, continued the downward trend, supported by our updated underwriting models and enhanced collection efforts.

Credit costs are down sequentially from 90 basis points in Q1 to 79 basis points in Q2, and now 63 basis points in Q3. Within this, we continue to watch the retail CV segment carefully.

Overall, we expect normalization of credit costs to continue, though at a more moderated pace. Total operating expenses continue to remain under control as we drive productivity and efficiency.

This quarter includes certain one-offs, which Devang will cover in his comments. In the subsidiaries, this quarter, our subsidiaries contributed 30% of consolidated profits, which grew 11% on a year-on-year basis.

Jaideep will take you through the details. At an overall level, the consolidated book value per share grew 15% year-on-year to ₹176 on a post-stock split basis.

Stepping back, this was another quarter of solid progress against our stated strategy. Kotak is the most comprehensive financial conglomerate.

We run the group through the bank and 19 wholly owned subsidiaries. This enables us to create holistic propositions for our chosen customer segments.

In addition to this, we run tractor finance, CBC as standalone product verticals. We've identified four focus segments: high-net-worth, Core India, SME, and institutional clients.

For the high-net-worth segment, we have the private bank and Solitaire propositions. Our private bank has shown consistent good growth in AUMs across MF, ND-PMS, AIF, etc.

Solitaire, our offering for the affluent, has worked well in growing CASA, SIPs, mutual funds, and driving card spend. In Core India, we have our 811 offering.

After the embargo, we're back to acquiring a large number of customers every month. This has also contributed to the savings book growth.

Our recently launched 811 Super is attracting the digitally savvy younger customer with a much better ticket size. SME continues to be the backbone of Kotak.

The total SME book grew 17% year-on-year to 1.16 lakh crores. On the institutional side, investment banking and alternate asset businesses had a very good quarter.

Additionally, we continue to be leaders in tractor finance, with a quarterly growth of 5% and year-on-year growth of 16%. On the tech front, we are now further accelerating progress on automation and digitization of Kotak, improving customer service, and enhancing efficiency.

This covers the entire gamut of the customer lifecycle and our various channels across sales offices, branches, call centers, and digital channels. These efforts have allowed us to grow the balance sheet without corresponding headcount growth.

We have made significant progress on strengthening technology resilience and recalibrating credit risk. Our strategy is clear, execution is progressing well, and we are seeing good traction in customer acquisitions, deposit, and asset levels.

The above results are a reflection of our continued progress against the execution of our strategy of driving scale for relevance without diluting our DNA of risk prudence and profitability. With that, I'll hand it over Devang to walk you through the numbers in detail.

Devang Gheewalla

Thank you, Ashok. Good evening, friends, and wishing you all a happy New Year.

Let me start with the overall bank performance for Q3. If you look at it, this quarter actually saw all-round improvement in net interest income, fee income, as well as credit cost, combined with growth in granular low-cost deposits while maintaining the credit growth.

Operating costs saw some one-offs related to acquisition and volume-related costs. I will speak about that later.

The bank's balance sheet grew 15% on a YoY basis, with net advances growing at 16% YoY. On advances book, mortgage assets continue its growth trajectory with 18% YoY growth.

Aggregate SME advances, as we do SME from three separate verticals, which is combined within commercial bank, agri working capital in consumer, and business loans and SME in wholesale business, all three put together growing at 17% YoY basis. The bank continues to retain its leadership position in tractor finance business with 16% YoY growth.

Absolute unsecured retail loan book showed gradual growth, as we had indicated. We remain cautious in growing retail commercial vehicle book while addressing the credit concerns.

Coming to the deposit side, aggregate total deposits grew 15% on a YoY, supported by healthy growth in low-cost deposits as CA and fixed rate SA, both growing at 15% across customer segments. Even on average basis, we saw significant granular movement in low-cost deposits, with average CA growing 8% QoQ and average fixed rate SA growing 4% on a QoQ basis.

We obviously also reduced our reliance on the MIBOR-linked SA, which has also helped us in getting a higher cost of fund benefit. CASA ratio at 31st December was at 41.3%.

Bank's net worth is at 1,30,000 crores, with a ROE for Q3 10.68%. Net worth increase in Q3 included about 2,000 crore unrealized gain on valuation of the strategic investments which we hold, which is the MCX and KFin.

As we have been accounting this post-tax gains under AFS reserve, and we are not taking it to the profit and loss account. ROE for Q3 computed on net worth, excluding this cumulative AFS reserves out of this strategic investment, is actually at 11.29%, and if you further adjust for the excess equity and at 15% sort of capital adequacy, our ROE is closer to 14%.

At the bank standalone level, the capital adequacy is very healthy at 22.6%, of which CET1 itself is 21.5%. Coming to the income statement, bank ended the quarter with a PAT of 3,400 crores.

Q3 includes higher cost on account of new labor code-related provisions, which at the bank standalone is 96 crore pre-tax basis. Adjusting for this, profit actually grew 8% on a quarter-on-quarter basis.

NIM for the quarter remained at 4.5%, which is same as last quarter, despite the 50% repo rate cut in the quarter of June. During the quarter three, we also saw a higher short-term liquidity, which was deployed in treasury assets.

If we exclude those short-term earning assets, our NIM actually improved to 4.58%, up 4 bps within the quarter. Cost of funds reduced by 16 bps during Q3 at 4.54%, driven by low-cost deposits and repricing of maturing term deposits.

If I look at the cost of fund trajectory, used to be 5.01% in Q1, reduced to 4.7% in Q2, now down to 4.54%. Fee income saw a healthy growth of 6% QoQ, contributed mainly by FX, debt capital, and distribution income.

Credit card fee growth continues to remain muted. Employee costs of the bank is 2,200 crore for Q3, which includes 96 crore, as I mentioned earlier, pursuant to the new labor code.

Further, there was a sparing in retirement cost during Q2, if you recall, which we had mentioned, which has been normalized during Q3. There is also an effect of Q3 movement over Q2 under the retirement cost, which has also impacted the cost.

Actual payroll costs without this, which is basically the CTC cost of all the staff, remained flat on a QoQ basis. Other operating expenditure of the bank is 2,700 crores for Q3, which is up 5% QoQ basis.

However, to further analyze that, its increase includes marketing spend during the festive period on brand promotions. Further, this quarter saw significant increase, which is seasonal factor, on the tractor finance disbursement.

As there is a higher brokerage which we pay in tractor finance, which is accounted upfront, and that's also resulted in the acquisition costs going up. There was also increased acquisition in 811 products, which also increased the volume-related costs.

Cost-to-income ratio without considering the one-off impact of the new labor code is at 47.4%. Asset quality parameters across all the parameters improved significantly during Q3 on expected lines.

Gross NPA at 1.3% versus 1.39%, net NPA .31% versus .32% last quarter, with a provision coverage ratio now at 76%. Credit costs for Q3 reduced to 63 bps, down 16 bps QoQ from 79 bps in Q2.

As you recall, Q1 credit cost was at 91. While delinquencies in unsecured retail business showing improvement, we remain cautious on retail commercial vehicle segment.

Slippages for Q3 were 1,600 crores, which includes 257 crore that got upgraded within the same quarter. The slippage ratio therefore improved to 1.34% from 1.41% in Q2.

Coming to the consolidated performance, with respect to group companies, capital market subsidiary showed growth with increased volume and improved market share. Our AMC business, including the trustee company, continues to perform well with growth in AUM.

Insurance business, which got impacted by GST regulations changes in Q2, has normalized in the current quarter. Our consolidated customer assets are at 5,98,000 crores, and AUM managed by the group is now 7,87,000 crores.

Both grew at 15% on a YoY basis. Q3 '26 consolidated profit after tax is 4,900 crores, grew 10% from 4,400 crores.

Q3 PAT is after the new labor code impact of 128 crores. 128 crore is the pre-tax cost at the group level, equivalent to 96 crore what we took it in the bank.

ROE at consolidated level is at 11.39%, and ROA for Q3 is 2.10%. The consolidated net worth of the group is now 1,75,000 crores.

Our capital adequacy continues to remain strong at group level at 23.3%, with CET is 22.4%. The book value of the share is 176, which has grown by 15% YoY, and this obviously the book value is after considering the split of the shares.

With this, I hand over to Pranav to take you through the highlights of the deposit franchise.

Pranav Mishra

Thank you. Devang has taken you through the numbers.

I will now take you through the underlying strategy of the bank deposit franchise. As outlined earlier, our strategy to serve the customer focuses on three levers for growth: consumption-led, investment-led, and asset-led in a cost-effective manner.

Customers are now highly digital, expecting real-time frictionless engagement across every touchpoint of the bank. We are providing and curating journeys to capture following customer behaviors, which trends across high-net-worth, mass affluent, and Core India, and that is a billion Indians.

Number one, consumption-first mindset. We are leveraging spending patterns to create relevant banking opportunities.

Number two, savers to investors. We are tapping into the shift from savers to investors via SIPs, demat, and trading accounts to build CASA granularly and sustainable growth onto it.

Liabilities opportunity from asset: we are building a banking ecosystem around customers having asset relationship by offering aspirational products. Our propositions are capturing these behaviors and providing enhanced experience to new-to-bank customers as well as adding value to our existing customers.

On current account, our average current account balances grew by 14% YoY this quarter. Our focus on the self-employed customer base continued to show momentum in a new acquisition, contributing to the overall balances and long-term value creation.

In addition, the focus on customer collection and payment flows drove the growth in throughput and liability balances. On savings account, our average fixed rate savings balances grew 12% YoY.

In savings account, our focus continues to be on high-net-worth, mass affluent, and core customer segment, supported by a comprehensive relationship-led approach that values customer engagement across Kotak's ecosystem, including liabilities, investments, insurance, and loans. Kotak Solitaire, as spoken by Ashok, that proposition was launched in quarter one and is designed to execute the above-mentioned strategy through quality acquisition, deeper relationship, and sustainable deposit growth.

We have observed an uplift in new-to-affluent customers with increase in relationship value, primarily driven by deposits and investments, including mutual funds, SIP, and other asset-building products. This trend is visible across both newly acquired and existing customers.

Kotak 811, our flagship digital banking proposition, continues to accelerate customer acquisition and digital service at scale with speed and simplicity. It gives Kotak granular, sticky, and low-cost deposits through seamless digital onboarding and app platform.

Kotak 811 Super savings account is a first-of-its-banking proposition based on cash flows, not on average monthly balance. It offers 5% cashback on debit card spends.

It is specifically designed for Core India customer—young, aspirational, and value-conscious. Term deposit, we grew by 17% YoY and 4% Q-on-Q.

Distribution, our distribution strategy continues to deliver Omni-banking experience by leveraging physical, digital, and virtual channels. The virtual banking platform bridges branch and digital services with personalized, scalable 24/7 customer engagement.

This approach helps us in enhancing operational efficiencies and effectiveness of remote banking services. Our ability to serve customer at both acquisition and service stages has been improved due to decongestion and digitization of processes across branches and all other channels.

Our focus remains on maintaining a balanced mix of savings, current, active money, and term deposit to drive sustainable growth in liabilities in a cost-effective manner. I now hand over to Vyomesh to take you through consumer asset business.

Vyomesh Kapasi

Thank you, Pranav. I take you through the highlights of the consumer assets.

At a macro level, the demand environment of consumer assets remained favorable, supported by stable economic activity and improving customer confidence. Our customer asset portfolio delivered 16% growth year-on-year and 4% growth sequentially, led by strong momentum in MSME segment, reinforcing our strategic focus on balanced high-quality expansion.

Mortgages: mortgage loans, comprising of home loans and loan against property, continue to register healthy growth of 18% year-on-year and 5% quarter-on-quarter. The home loan market continues to be price-sensitive.

However, our strategic focus on deepening customer relationship and positioning home loan as an anchor product for the affluent segment continues to drive steady traction. This approach enables us to increase wallet share from existing customer, helping in cross-selling to liabilities, investments, and other core banking products.

The home loan portfolio has demonstrated reasonable growth and remains a key area of focus. Loan against property segment, largely serving the MSME customer base, continues to show strong momentum, supported by healthy borrower demand and our disciplined approach to underwriting.

We maintain a strong position in this segment, supported by ongoing investment in process improvements, enhanced credit assessment, and an elevated customer service. Overall, the quality of our mortgage book remains sound, enabling us to sustain growth in this particular space.

Business banking: there is a sustained demand for working capital across sectors, driven by a surge in consumption trends following the changes in GST. Our secured business banking portfolio, comprising micro and small SME customer, recorded a strong growth of 21% year-on-year and 5% quarter-on-quarter, with utilization level remaining high, particularly during the festive period.

In the unsecured business loan segment, growth has remained steady, with our focus on maintaining portfolio quality. Overall, the business banking portfolio across both secured and unsecured segment continues to be stable.

Personal loans: our organic personal loan business continues to be the main driver of our growth in retail unsecured portfolio. Disbursements have stayed strong, led by salaried customer segment, supported by wider range of digital lending journeys.

Credit quality remains stable, helped by better analytics, sharper underwriting, and stronger risk controls. The rapid expansion of digital origination channels is allowing faster decisions, deeper customer reach, and healthy growth in this segment.

The personal loan portfolio acquired from Standard Chartered last year is performing better than expected. Although the rundown of the acquired book has been quicker this quarter, the strong pickup in organic disbursement positions us well for a return to growth in personal loan advances in coming quarters.

Our focus on maintaining credit quality remains firm. We will keep building this business by using data-driven insights, disciplined policies, and digital-first origination to manage risk effectively.

Credit cards: credit cards are key to our core strategy for deeper engagement with our customer, ecosystem stickiness, richer data insights, cross-sell, and better CASA retention to drive improved profitability. Our new Solitaire credit card continues to gain traction in the high-net-worth customer segment.

The GST cut and festive season improved customer spends and stronger portfolio engagement. We are seeing consistent improvement in credit quality due to moderating delinquencies, driven by enhanced data analytics, strengthened risk controls, and portfolio seasoning.

The analytics-led pre-approved programs, superior risk models, new product launches across customer segments, digital issuances, and targeted ecosystem partnerships will drive scale with quality. In summary, delinquency in overall unsecured portfolio has improved, with better flow rates and collection efficiencies observed in this quarter.

We continue to enhance our risk management and monitoring framework for all our consumer asset portfolio. We are leveraging analytics, including machine learning models, alternate data in collection to increase collection efficiency and recovery of unsecured portfolio.

I now hand over to Manish to take you through the commercial banking business.

Manish Kothari

Thank you, Vyomesh. I'll start the highlights of commercial bank with the commercial vehicles portfolio.

The CV industry saw a sales growth of 22% YoY and a 21% QoQ growth on account of growth across medium, light, small commercial vehicles. The growth was primarily due to reduction in GST and price hike announced by OEMs effective 1st of Jan.

We continue to maintain our overall market position with an appropriate customer segment mix, ranging from fleet operators to retail. As we had mentioned last time, we continue to witness some stress in the retail CV segment.

Hence, over the last few quarters, we have substantially tightened our underwriting and have reduced our disbursements to this segment. We have strengthened our collections accordingly.

The portfolio built over the last few quarters is showing better performance in terms of early delinquency trends, and hence we expect improvement in overall portfolio performance over a period of time. We'll continue to focus on building our business cautiously through calibrated risk interventions while keeping a close watch on certain customer segments.

Construction equipment: the construction equipment industry sales continued to witness negative growth, 14% negative YoY in Q3 and negative growth of around 10% for YTD December, primarily impacted by slower infrastructure activity, as well as project execution challenges due to early and extended monsoons disrupting equipment deployment, as well as tight state government cash flows delaying infra execution. Industry-wide, the institutional buyers and mid-sized contractors continue to show resilience, whereas small contractors and first-time users and buyers are navigating a slightly more tightened liquidity phase.

Given this environment, our disbursements were broadly in line with industry trends, and we continue to maintain our strong position in the market. Improved cash flow released by state governments, local bodies, municipal corporations, strong and expeditious project award by the government, and higher budgetary capex allocation in the upcoming budget will be key for the industry numbers to pick up in the coming quarters.

Tractor finance: the tractor industry sales saw 22% YoY growth and 19% QoQ growth in quarter three, primarily due to GST rate cuts, government support on subsidies, and favorable rural sentiment due to good monsoon. Monsoons extending into early November, as well as soft agri commodity prices, has had some impact on the cash flows of the farmers.

However, robust rabi sowing should improve rural cash flows. Our disbursements grew broadly in line with the industry, helping us maintain our leadership position.

Impact of cash flow for the farmers reflected in slightly lower collections efficiency in this quarter and is likely to recover as rural cash flows improve. Microfinance: the microfinance has had started degrowing quarter-on-quarter from quarter two of last financial year.

While the disbursements have picked up over the last few months, we expect the industry data to reflect a muted quarter three as well. Our retail microcredit book has remained flat quarter-on-quarter, primarily due to scheduled repayments offsetting the current disbursement rate.

The portfolio quality for business origination through our risk profile-based underwriting models is performing quite well. We expect disbursements to gradually improve from this quarter, and the portfolio performance to continue to get better in the coming quarters.

We have also started covering our microcredit loan disbursements under CGFMU credit guarantee scheme. Post-merger of BSS and Sonata in October, we are working towards integrating the overall franchise to serve our customers more efficiently across all geographies.

Agri business group: the agri SME book saw a YoY growth of 12% and a quarter-on-quarter growth of 8%, supported by pickup in working capital utilization and a strong growth in new-to-bank customer acquisition. The quality of book continues to remain good.

In this segment, we will continue to grow our new customer acquisition across agri clusters and focus on providing holistic solutions to these customers through a One Kotak approach, addressing borrowing needs, transaction banking, investment, and protection needs of our customers. I now hand over to Paritosh to take you through the wholesale banking and institutional business.

Paritosh Kashyap

Thank you, Manish. I will now take you through the highlights of the wholesale banking and institutional businesses.

This quarter, our wholesale banking assets, along with credit substitutes, grew at 17% YoY and 3% quarter-on-quarter, driven by robust advances growth. The credit substitutes book was, however, flat this quarter, as better loan market pricing led to a shift from investments to loans.

We maintained our emphasis on granular growth through the SME and mid-market verticals. In corporate SME, new business momentum remained strong with stable spreads.

Adjusting for the migration we did at the start of this year from SME to other verticals of the corporate bank, SME advances grew at 26% YoY and 7% quarter-on-quarter. SME remains a core strategic pillar, and our ongoing investment in technology projects, such as CRM, loan operating system, and digitization of customer journeys, are helping reduce turnaround time and improve productivity.

Consistent with our focus on building holistic, long-term relationship with customers, we partnered with Indian Institute of Technologies to launch programs that enhance further readiness and AI adoption among our SME customers. Our mid-market portfolio too continues to scale rapidly.

Our book here is diversified, and a substantial portion of the book is from working capital and flow-based businesses. Pricing continues to be a challenge in the larger corporate space, especially in long-term loans and project finance.

We continue to focus more on flow-led businesses and profitability through higher cross-sell, greater share of transaction banking, and deeper penetration. Trade remains a priority.

While overall growth in the trade book was muted this quarter due to pricing pressures in large mandates, the granular portfolio showed good momentum with new client acquisitions and mandates. We also saw good growth in the cross-border trade book in GIFT City.

Our recently launched e-Way Go digital platform for supply chain finance is also witnessing a robust pipeline. Our asset quality across customer segments continues to be robust, and we saw minimal slippages this quarter.

We continue to enhance returns and profitability through liabilities and fees. There was an uptick in DCM volumes and revenues this quarter, driven by successful completion of large transactions across corporates, real estate, and infra sectors.

FX revenue also grew, aided by both corporate and institutional flows. We continue to focus on increasing our share of customer collections and payment flows.

This quarter, overall number of transactions and throughput have grown well. This was complemented by capital market transactions, including escrows, dividends, buyback, resulting in healthy average liability growth this quarter.

Investment in technology, including the launch of a dedicated escrow platform and enhanced API capabilities, have further strengthened our systems. Our unified corporate portal, fyn, is seeing good customer adoption.

This quarter, we automated the working capital loan disbursement, dealer financing, and servicing on fyn. The wholesale bank continues to work closely with the investment bank and institutional brokerage businesses to improve corporate and investor coverage.

Together, the group is able to maximize opportunities across custody, escrow, FX, financing, and primary market activity, and deepen relationship across this franchise. This quarter was an active quarter for these businesses, with several marquee IPOs and advisory deals.

In capital markets, the investment bank managed 11 IPOs and 3 QIPs, raising a cumulative of about 74,000 crore, and in advisory, the investment bank advised on 5 transactions with a cumulative deal value of about 26,000 crore. The institutional brokerage business also maintained its Tier 1 ranking with most global FPIs for their India investments and with leading domestic mutual funds and insurance companies, and gained volume share in a challenging market.

Custody balances at the bank also showed growth this quarter in both the offshore and domestic custody space. We remain focused on onboarding new custody clients, including through GIFT City.

Overall, the wholesale banking and institutional businesses remain in good health, delivering acceptable ROE and demonstrating resilience across market cycles. I now hand over to Jaideep to take you through the subsidiary businesses.

Jaideep Hansraj

Thank you, Paritosh. Good evening to all.

Let me talk about our subsidiaries now. In Q3 FY26, our subsidiaries reported profit of 1,453 crores, up 11% YoY and 19% sequentially.

This strong performance meant subsidiaries contributed a healthy 30% of consolidated profits for the quarter, underscoring the depth and resilience of our conglomerate model. It enables us to capture shifting financial trends through cycles and retain profitability within the group.

Our four engines of growth that enable us to meet customer needs across the financial spectrum are banking and lending, capital markets, asset management, and protection. Starting with the lending subsidiaries, our largest contributor, Kotak Mahindra Prime, our auto finance business, delivered PAT growth of 15% YoY.

Its customer asset grew to 43,244 crores, with a YoY growth of 13%. KMIL and KIDF saw muted performance in the quarter.

Hence, the total PAT for lending and related subsidiaries degrew on a sequential basis, but was up 6% on a YoY basis. Turning to the capital market business, last year was an extraordinary period for capital markets, with buoyant volumes driving strong profits in our capital market subsidiaries.

The first half of this year was tepid, but Q3 has bounced back, with our PAT up 31% sequentially. Given the high base in the previous year, the PAT was down YoY.

In Kotak Securities, our overall market share increased to 13.5% from 11.5% on a YoY basis, and its market share in the MTF business was about 14% as of December 31st, 2025. As mentioned by Paritosh earlier, our institutional equities business and the investment banking business have had a very healthy round of market share, with Tier 1—the institutional equities business being a Tier 1 broker for global and domestic institutions, and KMPC acting as investment bankers for high-quality mandates.

Turning to the asset management business, Kotak AMC and Trustee Company saw a growth of 31% on a YoY basis and 22% on a QoQ basis. The total domestic MF AUM increased by 20% YoY to an average of 5,86,610 crores as of 31st December 2025.

KAML, Kotak Alternate Asset Managers Limited, is one of the largest domestic alternate asset managers in India, with total funds raised since inception of 11.08 US—of $11.08 billion. This quarter, we've done successful strategic exits in the portfolio, which is reflected in the profitability.

Moving to the life insurance business, the individual premium earned in grew 18.7% YoY in Q3 FY26. Our retail sum assured recorded a 75% growth in Q3 FY26 due to increased focus on the protection segment, aided by GST relief provided to customers.

The AUM has crossed 1 lakh crores for the life insurance business, showing a growth of 14% YoY. Kotak Life continues to maintain a solvency ratio of 2.3x, as against the regulatory requirement of 1.5x.

Q3 FY26 is flat on a YoY basis on account of GST and one-time labor code impact. In conclusion, let me reiterate that our unique strength lies in our breadth.

We manufacture every major financial product as a group, which subsidiaries not only build and distribute through their own channels, but also leverage the bank's distribution strength. Our 100% ownership allows us to retain full alignment and profit within the group, and also capture emerging opportunities across financial markets as trends evolve.

I will now request the operator to begin the Q&A session.

Operator

Thank you very much. We will now begin the question-and-answer session.

Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two.

Participants are requested to limit their questions to two questions per participant, and please use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now wait for a moment while the question queue assembles.

Our first question comes from the line of Kunal Shah from Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Kunal Shah

Hi. Thanks for taking the question.

Firstly on the margin part, it was flat quarter-on-quarter. Last time, you had guided that there should be a gradual improvement looking at the deposit repricing and the CRR benefit.

What has actually changed in terms of the expectations with respect to margins? You had indicated maybe some short-term liquidity deployed into treasury, which impacted by 4 odd basis points, but apart from that, anything else which has impacted the margins, which has just led it to be flat quarter-on-quarter?

What would be the outlook getting into Q4 and next year?

Devang Gheewalla

Hi, Kunal. Devang here.

You are right. Let's understand what was impacted before going to the likely scenario next quarter.

This quarter, of course, the yield got impacted, the floating rate yield got impacted by the 50 bps cut in the June, of which the effect came in the Q3 as expected lines. However, this was offsetted also by partially the CRR rate cut which happened during Q3, and of course, the repricing of deposits, where we saw the cost of funds reducing from 4.70% to 4.54%.

As against that, Kunal, as I explained, we also saw a lot of IPO-related short-term of funds available in the bank, and that obviously got deployed in the treasury assets, which are typically a lower-yielding assets for a short period of time. That effectively brings down the averages of the funds available and impacts the NIM mathematically.

If I effectively remove the effect of this short-term funds, which were significantly higher compared to the Q2 or average basis as well, the NIM improvement is actually 4.58% as against the average which got arrived at at 4.54%. Now the second question, how do we see the outlook going forward?

I think Q4 we will obviously have the impact of the .25% rate cut, which cut in the Q4 floating rate advances as well. However, the repricing of deposits, of course, will continue in the Q4, but at a lower pace.

As you can see, actually the cost of fund declined was 5.01% to 4.70%, now to 4.54%. It has been obviously at a reducing pace, which will go into Q4 as well.

However, the CRR cut which happened during each of the month in Q3, the average of that will have a full quarter impact benefit, actually, in the Q4. The last one, as Q4 has a typical aberration where in the February the lower number of days, while the yield on the advances are at a full month basis of 30 days, the deposits cost comes only for 28 days.

This does bring some sort of a kicker in the NIM, which is aberration, which gets of course corrected in the Q1. Assuming no further rate cuts in February, I think we will see a moderate increase in Q4 NIM, as I explained.

I think more realistic and stable NIM is something which we'll be able to sort of estimate going forward from Q1 once the aberrations are also removed and we have a clearer picture. We are already seeing some of the tightening in the liquidity and the rates in the term deposits hardening.

As against that, we also expect to see some growth in the unsecured business, and let's see how it plays out and impacts the NIM.

Kunal Shah

Sure. That helps.

The second question is with respect to credit cost. Eventually now we are seeing the specific credit cost coming down to 63 odd basis points.

You indicated some stress continuing on the retail CV, but otherwise, are we comfortable on PL, credit card? Has MFI also maybe almost peaked out and you should see the benefit?

Where should we ideally see the credit cost trajectory going forward?

Devang Gheewalla

Yes. The credit cost reduction is on the expected lines.

As I explained, the unsecured businesses, which is the microfinance, credit card, and personal loan, if I look at each of them, the microfinance and personal loan credit cost actually has started decreasing, and that's actually the benefit which is sort of we are seeing. Credit card obviously has plateaued, and it's not showing any increasing trend.

The primary reason for the reduction in the credit cost is on account of unsecured business credit cost coming down. On the commercial vehicle, I think we are now saying we are cautiously observing it.

We are hopeful that it will plateaued out during the Q4, and then we'll see how it operates. I think the good news is that the unsecured credit cost is behind us now, and that's what is effectively resulting in the reduction what we saw during the quarter.

Kunal Shah

What should be the steady-state credit cost number now after having achieved 63 basis points? Do we see improvement to 50, 60 basis points over a period, maybe over next 12 months period?

Devang Gheewalla

Kunal, if I just step back, pre-COVID, if I look at my credit cost, where of course my unsecured percentage was also lower, was hovering around .4%.45%. As you increase the mix of unsecured credit cost, obviously credit cost on a standalone basis might show an increase, but I think it also gets you higher returns.

Given that the mix of unsecured will gradually go up, it obviously has to be higher than the historical what we used to have, but clearly, even in Q4, we expect the credit cost to further gradually go down and the trend continuing during Q1.

Kunal Shah

Thanks. That's helpful, yeah.

Thanks. That's all from my side.

Devang Gheewalla

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Rikin Shah from IIFL Capital.

Please go ahead.

Rikin Shah

Hi, good evening, everyone. I had four questions.

The first one is on CA, and you alluded to some benefit from capital market, but even the average CA balances even on sequential basis for last two quarters have been improving. How much of this would you really be attributing to the capital market, and how should we think of stickiness of this deposits?

That's the first one.

Devang Gheewalla

Hi, Rikin.

Paritosh Kashyap

Hi, Rikin. This is Paritosh.

See, in our wholesale business, we have a large number of customers who are from financial segment, which is custody, private equity funds, mutual funds, insurance companies, all of them. Also capital market business gives us deal CA.

Some of these things are consistently one or the other customer keeps giving us this CA, even if this is deal CA, this is a regular and consistent deal CA which keeps coming to us from multiple set of customers. I would say there is a tendency of this business to be more sustainable with some degree of volatility.

Devang Gheewalla

Just to add, the current account average growth is not only wholesale deposit. I think the consumer current account also granularly grew, including the SME business, which also contributed.

My reference to the IPO and all that was with respect to the short-term deployment in treasury, but I think if I look at purely on a current account average thing, even it's not only wholesale, but I think the consumer banking also contributed to that in that. Despite EOP, if you recall, we had said that Q2 EOP had a lumpy deal-based thing, but on average basis also, if you see, the current account is showing a growth both for consumer as well as wholesale.

Rikin Shah

Got it. The second one is on the SA deposits.

Some of your peers have seen rundowns in the institutional SA deposits. What is the quantum of such deposits for Kotak?

How is it behaving for you, and the outlook on the same, please?

Pranav Mishra

Hi. This is Pranav.

With respect to institutional or for that matter marquee and bulky savings account, if you look at, we are more focused towards granularity, and we are also consciously looking on quarter-on-quarter running down as far as SA MIBOR is concerned. As far as the fixed rate SA is concerned, it is being built with primarily having more of retail focus onto it with granularity.

Also if you look at, one of the engines of growth for us is 811, which is primarily the smaller ticket size, but with lot amount of granularity and an active participation of the Core India into it. That's how we have designed our strategy to take care of whether high-net-worth individuals are concerned or for that matter mass affluent, and then the Core India.

That's where it is building on as far as more granularity than a bulkiness onto it towards institutions.

Rikin Shah

Got it. The third one is on the total cost of deposit.

How would that number look like? Would it be broadly 4.45%, and how much of term deposit repricing do you think is still remaining?

That's the third one.

Devang Gheewalla

Look, I think we have indicated the average cost of the saving account, which is already there in that. I think the term deposit rates obviously have sort of reduced over quarter-on-quarter, but I think as I indicated, getting into Q4, clearly there is some tightening and hardening of the rate which may take place.

In terms of the residual sort of repricing, as I explained, if I look at the cost of fund benefit itself, which used to be about 32 bps in Q1, reduced to 16 bps in Q2, and now it is around 16 bps in Q2, is further obviously as the repricing starts completing, it will further go down. Clearly, with the average stable term deposit, which is between 9 to 12 months, and if you look at roughly the repricing started towards middle of Q1, we expect the repricing to get completed by Q1 of the next year.

Rikin Shah

Got it. Perfect.

The last question is on the agri PSL. Some of the peers have had some regulatory supervisory observations.

Would you be able to comment whether the same audit has been done or any broader color for your book as well?

Ashok Vaswani

Yeah. Look, it's not possible for us to comment on other banks.

I just don't know. As far as we are concerned, we have not taken any provision.

Also, as far as the RBI audit is concerned, that is something that we are required to keep confidential, I can't discuss the findings of anything from the RBI audit. Suffice to say that, as you would have seen, we have not taken any provision in this quarter.

Rikin Shah

Got it. Thank you, gentlemen, for answering all the questions.

Good evening.

Devang Gheewalla

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Abhishek Murarka from HSBC.

Please go ahead.

Abhishek Murarka

Hi. Good evening.

My first question is on loan growth and specifically just coming to credit cards. This quarter, we've seen at least in the RBI data that came out that a lot of other smaller banks have started increasing their card issuances.

What seems to be holding you back in terms of card issuances and spend pickup?

Ashok Vaswani

Frankly, Abhishek, like we've been talking about, we've completely revamped our credit card proposition. We've launched a whole range of new products, right from Solitaire for the top end, to Air Plus and Air, which is a cash-mile product for the mass affluent, and then a cash-back product.

This whole range of products are going out, and you will start seeing growth in spend and ENR. Having said that, we want to be cautious.

We obviously don't want to grow very aggressively and then get into credit problems. As you would have seen, Q3 generally speaking, has been a very muted quarter for credit cards across the industry.

In the first instance, we will see spend on the cards go up as we ramp up acquisition, and then we will see ENR build over a period of time. The newly launched products, particularly Solitaire, is doing very well, and we're very hopeful that those numbers will start showing up very quickly.

Abhishek Murarka

It's probably more a matter of time that all these steps that you have taken, they'll start building up, and we start seeing some traction, maybe one or two quarters down the line in this portfolio.

Ashok Vaswani

That is correct.

Abhishek Murarka

Understood. As far as opex is concerned, one of the things is that the marketing spend and the acquisition cost, that will also continue to go up as PL, cards, etc., all of these scale up.

Just from a cost growth perspective, what kind of, say, medium-term growth should we look at as a sustainable run rate? Because right now, a lot of it is impacted by last year's slowdown in several segments, but going forward, we're looking at more traction.

How would the cost growth pan out?

Ashok Vaswani

Abhishek, think about it this way, that we want cost to go up when we are acquiring new customers in 811, in affluent, new cards, new tractor loans, and stuff like that. Those costs frankly are good costs, and let them kind of go up.

That will be offset by a lot of our effort in automation and digitization, where we're trying very hard and working feverishly to improve efficiencies and our customer experience. Obviously, as we kind of grow the acquisitions and grow the marketing cost and things like that, you will see income go up as well.

I don't think we can really talk about a kind of guidance on either cost-income ratios and stuff like that, but effectively, that is what we're trying to drive. Anything to add, Devang?

Devang Gheewalla

Yeah. Just to build on that, one data point, while Ashok rightly mentioned, the acquisition costs are obviously volume-related, which we obviously want to grow with our philosophy of growth for scale.

I think if I look at the fixed cost, and let's say the CTC, which is the payroll cost of the staff, which is effectively around 60%, 65% of the total cost, between Q3, Q2, it has remained flat. While we are spending on acquisition, new businesses, I think the fixed cost is where we are clearly controlling, and some of the investments in technology, which we have been continuing, is now sort of helping us to rationalize some of those things,

Ashok Vaswani

yeah.

Abhishek Murarka

No, absolutely. I don't look at costs as any negative item as such.

It is a necessity for growth and revenue generation, of course. Just as a thought process, if you're expecting a, let's say, mid-teens, high-teens, whatever, loan growth, cost would lag it substantially by 3, 4 percentage points, or you could see more operating leverage, as in cost growth being much slower than loan growth?

Just how do we think about these two, and then that can give a sense of the jaws going forward. I'm just trying to get some understanding there.

Ashok Vaswani

Over a period of time, Abhishek, not quarter by quarter by quarter, but on a trend basis, we should see cost to assets coming down, and we've started to see that trend, and we're hopeful that that trend will accelerate.

Devang Gheewalla

Actually, if you also look at cost to assets ratios, if you look at, as Ashok rightly said, over a longer period of time, if I look at from last year over this quarters, and this quarter, as I said, you have some aberrations, actually it has come down. It used to be above 3%, which is now down to around 2.7% and 2.5% sort of range, right?

It has always coming down, that's a good way to look at as a indication as a cost to the asset build up, basically. I think it's already on this way, and certainly we would like to further improve that as we go along, right?

Abhishek Murarka

No, exactly. That is where my question was from, because cost to assets has come down in a period when some of your assets which require more spends, they have not grown.

Now when they grow, does cost to assets go back to 3%, or from here, you continue to see steady reduction in cost to assets? Just that understanding, yeah.

Devang Gheewalla

I think we would like to obviously maintain cost to asset ratio in the range of 2.5% to 2.6%, right?

Abhishek Murarka

Okay. All right.

Thank you. Thanks a lot, and all the best.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, you are requested to please restrict yourselves to two questions only.

Our next question is from the line of Mahrukh Adajania from Nuvama. Please go ahead.

Mahrukh Adajania

Hi. Good evening.

My first question is on ECL. Based on the draft, what would be the likely impact on credit cost for you from ECL?

My other questions are that you did allude to some rundown in the PL portfolio purchased from Standard Chartered. Could you quantify or throw some light on it?

I just also wanted to know if you could quantify the proportion of liabilities which are yet to reprice in the fourth and first quarters from the

Devang Gheewalla

over

Mahrukh Adajania

Hello, hi. Hi.

Devang Gheewalla

On the ECL, as it is still a draft circular, which RBI has come up, and all the banks, including us, we have obviously represented because it requires you to make a floor-based provisioning by asset segment. However, considering even the draft circular, the impact of the ECL provision is less than 2% post-tax for us in the bank.

It's not likely to materially impact even if we were to apply the draft circular as is. That's the first point.

On the StanChart 2% of the net worth.

Mahrukh Adajania

Okay.

Devang Gheewalla

As we have significant higher net worth than required, we don't see any significant impact arising out of that. Even in fact, the circular also provides for amortizing that over four years and all that, but we'll see how the final draft circular comes.

I think it is suffice to say it is not a significant impact at all, even if you were to go as per the as-is circular. Coming to the Standard Chartered portfolio which is there, now I think the residual portion which remains is not very significant.

It's less than sort of 1,500 crore, approximately is about 20% of what it was, I think it will run down over the next two quarters in that sense. The third portion what you said is on the repricing which is left, which I partially answered earlier.

As we had mentioned, the term deposit average maturity is about 9 to 12 months, and we expect the repricing to effectively complete during the Q1 in that sense. That anyway, if you see the trend of cost of fund reduction, it reflects actually the repricing pace of the term deposit.

That's how I look at it going forward.

Mahrukh Adajania

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Kunal Engineer from CLSA. Please go ahead.

Piran Engineer

Hi, team. Congratulations on the quarter and also on hiring Mr.

Saha. Just firstly, getting back to the current account thing, our growth for the last two quarters was good.

Last quarter was even better at 8%. Is all the pickup in growth due to the capital markets business or some structural changes we've made due to which current account growth is picking up?

Devang Gheewalla

Hi, Pranav. Our current account is primarily, if you look at, there's lot amount of activity around the granularity in the market also, and we've been able to capitalize on in terms of the opportunity which is being thrown out there in the market as far as acquisition of more of what you called as private limited companies, proprietary, and things like that.

Our growth primarily, and that's where you'll find an AMB growth commensurating with the fact that these are granular current account franchise getting created.

Paritosh Kashyap

I'll just add, in addition to that, our focus on building CMS capabilities and offering more cash management services to our corporate customers, which not only helped us get better CA, also effectively helps improve productivity both at bank end as well as the customer end. That's together between consumer bank and the wholesale bank helping us improve the CA.

Piran Engineer

See, this was also true a year back, right, year, year and a half back. Our growth was still weak then, and we were catering to the SMEs, we had the consumer banking product, cross-selling current accounts to them.

This year, we've seen, current account deposit growth really accelerate. Just trying to understand, maybe this happened by chance, but have there been any specific steps we've taken was my question.

Ashok Vaswani

Trust me, it hasn't happened by chance. It's been a lot of effort and a lot of focus of the sales teams, and Pranav has driven a lot of this through the branch network.

We've been very focused on getting the affluent customer base. The level of changes that we've driven through our branch network, both in terms of process, focus, building out branches based on persona of catchment areas, making the whole acquisition process far more efficient, all of that, plus all the automation and digitization to help customers with their payment flows has all resulted in this.

Trust me, it's been a tremendous amount of effort and focus on this area, which has led to this kind of performance.

Piran Engineer

Got it. Sir, okay, that helps.

Secondly, just on your agri finance book, now last couple of years, it's been unchanged at 25,000 crores. This is different from the tractor book.

Can you just talk a bit about what loans are there here and why are not growing them? I'm presuming these are better-yielding than the rest of the book.

Manish Kothari

This is primarily the agri SME value chain, which is what we cover here. This is not the KCC book.

This is primarily the agri SME value chain business, which is what we have kind of pivoted around building around the various agri clusters across the geography. That is something which we kind of pivoted as a strategy over the last couple of years in terms of driving it.

That is what is yielding results in terms of numbers that you are seeing. Slowly, the numbers have been inching up on a last three quarters when you see the numbers.

Piran Engineer

These are to what, food processing units or storage units or stuff like that?

Manish Kothari

Agri traders, agri processors, primary processors, secondary processors, all of that falls within this particular segment.

Piran Engineer

Got it. Okay.

Then just lastly, a couple of clarifications I needed. Devang, when you say the CTC is flat, but even if I adjust for the labor code, the employee opex is up 9%.

What am I missing here? Secondly, what is the mix of LAP in the mortgage book?

Devang Gheewalla

I also mentioned that if you see the pension liability last time I had mentioned, we had a benefit because of the interest rate movement, which has effectively reversed out and normalized during the quarter. That is the first part.

Second, I think some of the share-based incentive which are like SAR obviously the provisions has gone up because of the share price movement, which is impacted those provisions.

Piran Engineer

Got it. Just on the LAP percentage of the mortgage book?

Devang Gheewalla

LAP and sort of LAP, I think it should be around almost equal, 55%, 60% sort of thing, basically.

Piran Engineer

Got it. That's useful.

Thanks and wish you all the best.

Ashok Vaswani

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, you are requested to please restrict yourselves to one question only.

Our next question comes from the line of Suraj Das from Sundaram Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.

Suraj Das

Hi. Thanks for the opportunity.

I think few questions have already been answered. Just a follow-up and two questions total.

First one on the credit card follow-up. Sir, while, as you have mentioned that your Solitaire card seems to be performing well, but I guess last time you had earlier slowed down the card acquisition through 811 channel for the mass customer segment.

Has that funnel been reopened? That is one.

Also, in terms of this Solitaire card, it is a super premium card, right? Is it a ROE accretive product?

Related to credit card, also one question. In terms of this proportion of personal loans on credit cards, what would be that proportion in terms of this overall personal loan book of 25,000 crore?

That is question one. Question two, sir, is on strategy a bit.

In terms of, say, the bank's leadership bandwidth in the consumer vertical has been further strengthened. In that context, do you have any plans, say, to expand or rejig the consumer bank's product portfolio?

Are there any products which are probably not key focus areas or maybe growth drivers today, or maybe you're not offering currently, but you see becoming incremental growth drivers over time? The last question, sir, in terms of this IDBI deal, what would be your comments, since now government has finally invited bids?

Ashok Vaswani

Yeah. Let's start with cards, right?

Look, Solitaire is targeted towards the affluent. Solitaire has landed well.

The spend on the Solitaire card is proving to be very accretive for us. While it is still early days to see how it kind of builds up, I believe that Solitaire will be a profitable product in its own right, given the levels of spend that we're getting on Solitaire.

Your other question around 811, at one point in time, we had done a lot of experiments with the 811 kind of customer base, and those experiments did not entirely work out well for us. It's not as if we're not selling card products to the 811 base, but we're doing it in a much more refined kind of way using advanced risk models and capping exposure just to make sure that we're getting it right.

That will kind of continue. We will come back on cards and kind of grow the book.

IDBI, look, we look at every single transaction that comes up in the marketplace, and we essentially have three criteria that we look at. The first criteria we look at is this particular transaction going to add to us strategically, right?

If the transaction adds to us strategically, then, of course, we go to the next stage. If it doesn't add strategically, it kind of goes away.

Then we look at valuation and say, what are the valuation on this particular transaction, and is it value-accretive for the firm? I've said time and time again that, for us, scale is scale for relevance and not just scale for size.

Does it really add strategically, and will it be accretive to the group? If it is both strategically and financially good, then, of course, we get excited about the transaction.

Even then, there is a third lens that we put to it. The third lens that we put to it is really the lens of saying what is it going to take to really integrate this kind of acquisition, right?

We are on a pretty significant transformation path. Our transformation path is about getting far more customer-centric.

It's about automating and digitizing Kotak to take it to a completely different level. There's a lot of effort that we're pushing into driving those efficiencies within the system because those will be really longer-term significant benefits for Kotak.

Even if it meets strategically or if it meets valuation, then we always compare what does it really mean in terms of integration. How much management bandwidth is it going to be?

How much of that will be a distraction? What are the kind of things that you really want to spend your time on?

You want to spend your time on developing new technologies, getting into the AI game, making customer satisfaction a big big priority, or do you want to spend your time integrating HR systems, dealing with labor unions, and all of that kind of good stuff? Therefore, we look at every single opportunity against these three lenses, right?

Whichever opportunity comes up, we will continue to look at it against these three lenses and then weigh up whether it makes sense for us or does not make sense for us.

Suraj Das

Sure, sir. Sir, those two questions on the strategy on the consumer bank and the PL on cards.

Ashok Vaswani

On the consumer bank, look, our stated strategy is all about identifying focus segments and going aggressively after focus segments to get disproportionate market share, right? We've launched the Solitaire proposition.

We've got a great proposition in the private bank. Core India, we've got a great proposition in 811.

Now, these propositions, once we land the proposition, it's not as if we're going to just keep quiet, right? We want to continue to enhance these propositions so that we get a greater deal of customer engagement and a higher level of acquisition.

That is going to be an ongoing effort as far as we are concerned, right? We're constantly monitoring what our customers are saying, what do they really want, and how can we serve these customer segments better.

Based on the feedback that we are getting, based on the conversations, we will improve the propositions that we have in the marketplace.

Suraj Das

Sure, sir. Any quantum if you can highlight on the PL on cards portion on the overall personal loan

Ashok Vaswani

book? We have a pretty much separate product in PL, and our PL on card frankly to my mind is not such a great product because it clogs up the credit limit, and therefore, for us, that is not a very significant proportion of the credit card book.

Suraj Das

Sir. Thank you for answering all my questions.

Operator

Thank you. Our next questioner is Jai Mundhra from ICICI Securities.

Please go ahead.

Jai Mundhra

Hi. Good evening, sir, and thanks for the opportunity.

Sir, on slippages, right, the absolute slippages are stable QoQ. You have been mentioning that the bank has been experiencing improving trajectory on personal loan, credit card, MFI, and those are supposedly high-delinquent product.

If they are improving, then which is the piece which is rising, and hence the overall slippages are stable? If you can provide some clarity there, apart from the retail CV, which anyways a very small proportion, I believe.

Devang Gheewalla

Hi, Jay. If you look at the slippages data, you are right that if you compare just the slippage data, say 1,629 going to 1,605 doesn't make a significant reduction.

I think I would urge you to look at the fresh slippages upgraded within the same quarter. If you look at that number, during this quarter is 257.

Effectively, while 1,605 crore is a gross slippage which we entered during quarter, of which 257 actually also got cured during the quarter. If I look at the similar number in the last quarter, it is 169, 55.

If I consider the upgraded portion also as a part of the slippage, actually it has come down by about 100 crores on a quarter-on-quarter basis. That's the first part.

Second piece, I think, yes, slippages are a combination, but I think in terms of the unsecured businesses, they are indeed coming down. I think it's the commercial vehicle and some of the rural-related advances and CV, commercial retail, which is effectively sort of bringing it in the quarter.

Jai Mundhra

Sure, sir. Lastly on One Kotak, right, as we have been saying that we are a unique-positioned financial conglomerate.

If I look at the core fee income, despite industry-leading loan growth and deposit growth, but core fee income growth has been much weaker or much smaller than the loan growth and even in absolute basis, despite all this conglomerate strategy. When can we expect the core fee income going more or less similar in terms of business growth?

Or so far was there any obstacle? Thank you.

Devang Gheewalla

Two things, Jay. One, obviously, the fee income consists of a combination of a whole host of things, starting from foreign exchange income to DCM income to life insurance distribution income to mutual fund distribution income, and other such products as well.

If you look at the fee income growth on a QoQ basis, you've started seeing green shoots with a 6% growth on a quarter-on-quarter basis. As I said that this is something which has been started.

We've been talking about for maybe about two, three quarters now, and it's not immediate that you will see the results, but a 6% quarter-on-quarter number is, I would say, a beginning, and we'd just like to keep growing on that, hopefully on a quarter-on-quarter basis.

Ashok Vaswani

I think it's beyond the fee line also, right? Look, there is no question about getting referrals for assets, and it's also not only just from the subs to the bank.

It's also from subs to the bank, but also bank to the subs. I think you've got to look at it a little more holistic basis.

Jai Mundhra

Right. Thanks.

I think, sir, if you could repeat what you said in response to that we have strengthened the consumer banking management bandwidth. Any products that you would like to sort of rehash or reintroduce or introduce or scale up over the next few quarters, years?

Thank you.

Ashok Vaswani

Yeah. What I said was that, look, ultimately, it's not so much about doing a particular product.

It's more about the propositions that we've landed for our various customer bases, right, and strengthening the proposition. We land the proposition with a certain set of products and services, and then we are constantly monitoring what customers say about that proposition.

Based on the feedback, we continuously strengthen the proposition so that it becomes more meaningful and more engaging for our customers. We will continue to do that.

There'll be things that will land which will have resonated with customers, and then there'll be other things which may have not resonated or there'll be feedback, and we will twist and adjust the propositions to take care of those things.

Jai Mundhra

Sure, sir. That helps a lot.

Thank you, and all the very best.

Ashok Vaswani

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Chintan from Autonomous.

Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking my questions. I'll restrict myself to one question.

Devang, you mentioned that rates are tightening and competitive dynamics might not be as good in the fourth quarter. Do you not think the RBI measures will help there, or is the tightening for you strong enough that we should be a little wary of how the dynamics play out in the fourth quarter?

Devang Gheewalla

I think Chintan, hi. My comment was also based on the initial liquidity in the system data which we are seeing.

Of course, you are right. Some of the measures have been taken by RBI currently.

Typically, Chintan, if you see, Q4 is a very quarter where for the corporate as well as for the bank, where the liquidity does tighten up in that sense. It was more based on what we saw for the first 10 days of January.

Of course, if RBI takes measures and to ease it out, it will sort of reflect in that. Till date, at least we have seen, even if you see the term deposit rates quoted by the peer banks across the buckets have actually inched up.

My comment was based on that experience, actually. Now, of course, with this measures tightening, who knows whether they will sort of further bring it down, but let's see about that, yeah.

Okay. Just a request for the next quarter.

Just for a couple of quarters, if you could give us yield on advances and cost of deposits just as this repricing completes. I know you don't want to get into that granularity, but it'll help for a few quarters.

Thank you.

Devang Gheewalla

We'll consider your request.

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will take that as our last question for today.

I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Ashok Vaswani for closing comments.

Over to you, sir.

Ashok Vaswani

No, thank you so much. Thanks, everybody, for joining us.

Much appreciate doing this on a Saturday evening, and I look forward to seeing you all again in approximately 90 days. Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Devang Gheewalla

Bye.

Operator

Thank you. On behalf of Kotak Mahindra Bank, that concludes this conference.

Thank you all for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.