Thank you, Danish. A very good evening to everyone.

Along with the senior management of SBI Card, I extend a warm welcome and sincere thanks for joining us today for the Q1 FY '27 earnings call. India's macroeconomic fundamentals continue to provide a strong foundation for the long-term growth.

Even amid a volatile global environment, the Indian economy remains amongst the fastest growing major economies, with GDP projected to expand around 6.6% in FY 2026-'27, supported by strong momentum in private consumption and services. Alongside stable economic state, India's rapid digital transformation is reshaping how consumers and business transact, creating a stronger foundation for digital financial services.

India's digital payment ecosystem continues to expand rapidly, supported by strong merchant payments growth and an extensive QR network infrastructure. India has emerged as a global leader in real-time digital payments, with 49% of the worldwide transaction volume, and UPI serving as the backbone of the country's digital economy, enabling instant and secure payments at scale.

The future of financial services lies in the convergence of payments and credit, where UPI drives engagement and credit cards deepen customer relationships through credit access, flexibility, rewards, and trust. A significant development has been the growing adoption of RuPay credit cards on UPI, which is expanding the role of credit cards.

This structural evolution is translating into sustained growth for the credit card industry. India now has 121 million credit cards in circulation.

Looking ahead, the industry is projected to grow consistently over the next decade. The regulatory environment has also evolved significantly, with increased emphasis on responsible lending, customer suitability, digital resilience, cybersecurity, and customer protection.

We believe these measures are positive for the long-term health of the industry, and will further strengthen customer confidence in digital payments and financial services. At SBI Card, our strategy remains focused on strengthening our market position through disciplined execution, customer-centric innovation, and sustained investments in digital capabilities.

As the industry continues to evolve, we will continue to build a business that delivers sustainable growth while creating long-term value. To support this strategy, following key priorities will define the next phase of growth: we will grow banca as a channel and acquire premium customers digitally with high spending patterns and good credit scores; strengthen our diversified core and co-branded product portfolio across all key sectors, including lifestyle, retail, travel, among others; expand our reach in potential growth markets, including Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, along with the metros; continue to invest in next generation digital capabilities to elevate and simplify customer journey; harness data and analytics to enhance customer insights and engagement, strengthen credit decision making, making robust underwriting standards, prudent risk management, and reinforce portfolio quality.

Our strong market position with 18.6% market share in cards-in-force and 19.5% share in card spends reinforces confidence in our strategy and our ability to deliver sustainable growth in the evolving credit card market. As a customer-centric organization, SBI Card continued to focus on varied initiatives during the quarter.

We expanded our strategic partnerships to introduce relevant national, regional, and local offers, broadening customer choice. SBI Card's varied initiatives have been recognized and bestowed with many prestigious awards.

We were honored with the prestigious Abby Awards for Best Use of Augmented Reality, and the ET Brand Disruption Awards for Most Disruptive Customer Experience and Engagement. The awards recognize our continued focus on innovation and enhancing customer experiences.

I'm pleased to share that during the quarter, our co-branded BPCL SBI Card crossed the 5 million milestone, making it one of the largest fuel co-branded credit card partnerships in India. As regards the business performance, building on the momentum from the second half of FY '26, we began the financial year FY '27 by delivering on our stated objectives across business and financial metrics.

I'm pleased to share that as of now, SBI Card is the second largest credit card player in terms of cards-in-force, spends, as well as transactions. Cards-in-force have grown to around 2 crore 26 lakh, witnessing a 7% growth Y-o-Y.

In alignment with our stated strategy and roadmap, we successfully added more than 1 million new accounts in Q1 FY '27, with 17% Y-o-Y growth. As per the RBI data released yesterday, SBI Card has added net card addition of 4.84 lakhs, which is highest in the industry for the quarter.

Our sourcing distribution remains balanced, with about 47% sourcing from banca and 53% from the open market. As per RBI June 2026 data, our spends market share has grown to 19.5% versus 18.1% in FY '26.

Total spends have reached highest ever level of 1,18,475 crores in Q1 of FY '27, growing 27% Y-o-Y. Retail spends also reached 94,033 crore, with a 14% Y-o-Y growth.

We have seen good growth in both POS and online spends across most spend categories. Key ones include consumer durables, furnishing and hardware, apparel, and jewelry.

Online spends continued to be strong and contributed 63% of the total retail spends. UPI on credit card usage has grown further by 13% quarter-over-quarter, especially in department stores, groceries, utilities, fuel, restaurant, and apparel categories, driven by RuPay and QR acceptance.

Tier 2+ cities continue to contribute strongly to overall retail spends on the back of UPI on credit card spends. Supported by momentum in customer spends, receivables have increased to 58,269 crore, representing a growth of around 2% quarter-over-quarter and 3% Y-o-Y.

Interest-earning assets remained stable at around 55%, and revolver rates were 22% in the IBNE. We expect asset growth to pick up from the second half of financial year 2027, given higher new acquisition from this quarter onwards and festive season in Q3.

Coming to the financial performance, our PAT for Q1 FY '27 has grown to 664 crore, up 20% Y-o-Y, driven by significantly improved credit cost. The total revenue for Q1 FY '27 stood at 5,205 crore, with 3% Y-o-Y growth.

Operating cost was higher Y-o-Y, mainly due to business growth. Despite volatility in interest rates in Q4 FY '26 and Q1 FY '27, the daily average cost of fund remained stable at 6.6% from Q1 for the quarter ended June 2027.

However, we expect COF to trend higher in line with the market rates. The portfolio yield at 16% for the quarter, the net interest margin for the first quarter was at 10.8%.

Our liquidity position continues to be strong. Our capital adequacy ratio remained at a healthy level of 25.6%.

ROA for the quarter was 3.9%, 51 basis points higher Y-o-Y, and 26 basis points higher quarter-over-quarter. The improved profitability and higher ROA puts us on track to achieve our stated ROA guidance of 4% to 4.5% in medium-term.

ROE for the quarter was 16.5%, higher by 72 basis points Y-o-Y, and 89 basis points quarter-over-quarter. Coming to the asset quality, while the external environment continues to be influenced by global geopolitical uncertainties, our current assessment is that the domestic macro fundamentals remain relatively resilient.

Over the last two years, we have taken multiple actions to strengthen underwriting, portfolio monitoring, and collections, which has led to an improvement in the asset mix, with stage two and stage three contributions in the asset book being lowest post-COVID. Our gross credit cost has improved by 116 basis points quarter-over-quarter, and 301 basis points year-over-year to 6.5%, continuing the reducing trend over the last one year.

Gross NPA has reduced by 36 basis points quarter-over-quarter, and 102 basis points year-over-year to 2.04%. Net NPA is below 1%, at 0.83%, which is the lowest since Q3 of FY '23.

NPA stock has reduced by 179 crores quarter-over-quarter, and 544 crores year-over-year to 1,191 crores. Stage two at 3.57% of the asset book has reduced by 10 basis points quarter-over-quarter, and 116 basis points year-over-year.

Annual review of the ECL model has been completed in Q1 of FY '27. As a result of this, 180 crore has been consumed out of 220 crore overlay of the previous quarter.

Further, with improved portfolio mix during the quarter, a provision of 65 crore has been released. However, we are still carrying forward 70 crore of overlay, keeping in view the current geopolitical uncertainties.

Delinquencies have reduced in this quarter too, as witnessed in the last six quarters. We continue to remain watchful, particularly for any second-order impact on fuel prices, inflation, and consequently, customer cash flows.

As we continue to maintain underwriting discipline and robust portfolio monitoring and strong collections, we expect the gross credit cost to stay within the current range, subject to any adverse impact of Middle East conflict on the asset quality. To conclude, as we look forward, we believe the fundamentals for the credit card industry remain promising, providing a strong foundation for sustainable long-term growth.

Our strategy is centered on balancing growth with profitability, creating enduring value for all our stakeholders, and maintaining strong asset quality through disciplined underwriting and prudent risk management. Guided by these priorities, we are very confident of our ability to deliver profitable growth and further strengthen our market position in FY '27.

With that, thanks to all for your time. Now we are happy to take questions.

Thank you so much for the opportunity, and very happy to see the improved market share and improved numbers on various fronts.

Thank you, Nilesh.

Yes, ma'am. Ma'am, how we can predict or we can foresee in revolver account in coming financial year?

Nilesh, we expect the revolvers to continue to be stable where they are right now. As we have been saying that we have witnessed a little bit of a downward bias on the revolver, but they will stay in somewhat the similar range.

As I mentioned earlier that we have seen very good uptick in terms of our card acquisitions, and also there are a lot of initiatives which have been taken which have led to better IBNE this quarter, also growth in the EMI portfolio. All these things are definitely going to add to the revenue in the coming days.

Okay. How much EMI portion from 33%?

Any guidance to increase that portion as well?

No, we are not giving any guidance in terms of the numbers, but expecting that, see, the festive season is ahead of us. Definitely there will be an uptick in the EMI portfolio going forward.

Okay. Last question, considering the ongoing current global geopolitical situation, how do you see the cost of fund and market spend?

Cost of fund, I would say, as of now, we don't expect much change. It should remain somewhere in the similar range.

Ultimately, it will depend to a very large extent on the policy action as well in terms of the rates. The second question was on the spends, right?

Again, we are monitoring the portfolio in terms of how it is going to impact the Middle East conflict. As of now, we have not witnessed anything substantial, but as I mentioned, we will continue to monitor because we are in the business of unsecured lending, and we will stay alert to any significant stress happening, and we'll take quick action if needed.

Okay. Thank you, ma'am.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Hello.

Hi, hello.

I'm audible, right?

Yes, you are audible.

Yeah. Congratulations on a good quarter.

Obviously that we are on a improving trend. My two questions are basically I want to understand from a credit card perspective, do we have a PL on credit card kind of a product?

Because we see a lot of our competitors having those kind of products. First is that, because that would help us on the EMI side.

The second part is from EMI itself, increasing the share of EMI, what if you could elaborate a bit more on what initiatives we are taking and how it is panning out over the last, let's say, one year? Just a last question would be on, over the past two years, we have seen that we have been very strict in terms of what kind of portfolio we underwrite or what kind of limits that we provide to our customers.

We have been very strict about not going very overboard with respect to increasing the limits of our customers. Going ahead, as we see that the portfolio has seasoned a bit, do we now take some of these initiatives in order to improve on our spends growth?

Also, if you could speak on that as well. Thank you.

You can talk about EMI, Girish.

On the EMI, as we have stated in last couple of calls also, our focus primarily is on spend to lend. We are focusing on how the customer converts its spending either at the point of sale itself or after that.

To that effect, actually, in last two years, there has been a lot of effort which has gone in. We have understanding and arrangements with almost all the OEM in the country wherein and have offers for our customers at the point of sale or online.

We also work with all the payment gateways, PGs, and intermediaries in between who are able to process the data and be able to give it to us indirectly, okay? Moreover, more than offers, actually, it is the ease of converting your outstanding balance into installment, which is very critical.

If you open our mobile app, which is very highly rated, today our mobile app is rated 4.5 and 4.6 on both iOS and Play Store. In those, if you open the mobile app, at the first instance where it is the pay now button, along with it, it has pay in EMI.

It gives the option to the customers to pay in installment. We see a good percentage and of our spends and in double digits, which gets converted into installment lending every month.

It is a very large number. Second thing is it is also helped by the consumer behavior moving in that direction.

For example, in the last quarter, you would have seen that the prices of consumer durables have gone up, and the moment the large ticket size or consumer durable prices go up, the conversion rate to installment lending also goes up along with it. That trend line is also fairly visible.

This is how we are focusing on installment lending. On the credit limit space, we have been, as a normal standard, we have been increasing and decreasing credit limits basis the risk profile of the customer.

So-- As Girish rightly said, see, we now have a better visibility because we have been enhancing our analytics also of late. There we have a better visibility, and we are in a better position to impute the income of the customers well.

Of late, we have done a lot of rationalization of limits as well, and we have seen an increase where maybe we were slightly conservative, yes, because we were going through a tough cycle, but that rationalization is already underway. The enablers that are in place today enable us to basically do that kind of rationalization, and we are already working on it.

We should see a reversal in this trend where we no longer need to rationalize it further? Because where I'm coming from is if you want to have those EMIs increasing, ideally that would come hand in hand with having a higher limits with the customers.

Because if somebody wants to make a big purchase and want to convert it to EMIs, he would want to do it on a card where he has a higher limit. That's where I'm coming from.

Ameya, let me correct myself. By rationalization, I mean increasing the limits.

Rationalization can go either way. If some customer is eligible for a higher limit, he will get a higher limit.

You're absolutely right that limits sometimes can be a constraint for boosting spends. If you look at our spend numbers also, we have been doing better than the industry overall.

Things are benefiting us overall in terms of the enhancing the overall value for the company.

On this PL on credit card space, if we have any products from that end and if there is any pickup for us?

As of now, some of our customers carry that asset, but to a new set of customers, at this point of time, we are refraining from offering that. We might look at it into the future.

As of now, we are not offering. Just

what is our thought process behind that? Because as I understand, this is quite a good product, and we already know a lot about the cash flows and the repayment of these customers.

Why would we refrain from having a PL kind of a product?

We are evaluating it, Ameya, as of now. It's an internal evaluation.

Okay. Okay.

Thank you.

Good evening, and thanks for the opportunity. Congrats on a good set of numbers.

Ma'am, want to understand what would be our guidance on credit cost by the exit quarter of current financial year? How are we looking at the receivables growth for FY '27?

See, as of now, again, I am not giving any guidance in terms of the numbers. As I mentioned, that this trend of credit cost, we will see some more moderation going forward.

Whatever initiatives we have taken in the last 1 and 1/2, two years, basically that has resulted in the stock being at such a position that the credit quality will further improve. As I gave a guidance, in the second half of this year, we will see growth in receivables as well.

I'm refraining from giving any guidance in terms of the absolute numbers or percentage terms right now.

Sure. One of our competitors, a mid-sized private bank has indicated that by 3Q, they should see their credit cost revert back to 5%.

They're expecting almost normalized trends by second half. In that context, just wanted your views with respect to SBI Card.

Normalization can be debated first of all, but definitely, as I mentioned, we will moderate further in terms of credit cost.

Sure. Secondly, if you look at the data that comes out on RBI on the credit by NBFCs to consumer durables, that's been growing at a healthy rate.

Does that impact our spends and the EMI book? Are any steps that you can possibly take to offset that pressure?

No, actually, if you look at it over a long period of time, both have been growing consistently. From a credit card spend perspective, that is a mix of payment as well as lending requirement.

Whereas NBFC's loan book is primarily lending requirement.

Right. Essentially, somebody who is taking that loan there, and in case they're getting it at a better rate, they would be cannibalizing our growth?

See,

you are right. See, two things there.

You are right that if there's an option for going for a personal loan, if he has an option of lower-priced personal loan, he will take a personal loan for that purpose. That is why what Girish spoke about is that EMI product is something which is comparable in terms of pricing is something which we are working on as well.

That is one of the reasons why we have seen a slight reduction in the revolver rates as well. The second thing, see, what we believe is that in India, credit card is a very underpenetrated market right now.

We have not still reached to very many customers. Now with the kind of data which is available, it's not that the personal loan product and credit card product cannot work together.

There's tremendous opportunity for both, and you are right that there will be some customers who might have availed a credit card limit earlier as a revolver, might be doing a personal loan today. Which is fine because there are other opportunities for us.

Just one thing to add. If it is a structured requirement of money and the customer knows about it in advance

and

it is a large ticket, then people go for personal loan, okay? That's the standard, if you look at the average ticket size of personal loan ranges from anywhere between 1.5 lakhs to 2.5 lakhs, okay?

Tenor sizes are longer. It's 36 months, 33, 34, 35 months or so.

Whereas the kind of lending which is happening on the card, which is the EMI installment-based lending, is 9, 10, 11 months kind of thing, okay? They are two different thought processes and requirements of the customer.

Sure. Sir, if you can just--

Sure. Okay.

Thank you.

My questions have been answered. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

My question is on the growth mix between the retail and corporate spend. Could you please share its long-term outlook for these two segments?

Also, I wanted to understand relative economics of each portfolio in terms of yield, interchange fees, credit cost, and ultimately our impact on our bottom line. Thank you.

Corporate spends, we have also earlier stated also, we would like it to be around 20% of our overall spends. Industry typically has an average of around 20% to 25%.

We want to be at the lower end of the spectrum. Corporate card spends are typically, we don't give lending options there, the customer has to pay back the full outstanding balance.

Primary source of income is interchange. Interchange varies by the card type, MCC or merchant category, and the product type which is being held by the customer.

Depending on these, whatever interchange is available on corporate versus consumer, that are two different things. Profitability, in terms of if you look at ROA, because the asset is not there, return is primarily fee income there.

Whereas on the retail side, you make fee income, as well as you make interest income also. On a overall basis, the absolute sense, the corporate card profitability is very low.

The profits is essentially shown by the retail card.

Okay. Sir, any target to go below 20%, or is it compulsory to maintain this due to industry nature?

No, we can take it below 20% also. We like to keep most of our spends profitable.

There is obviously a seasonality and customer sensitivity around this, but that is kind of the higher end of the spectrum for us. Okay.

Okay. Thank you, sir.

Thanks for the opportunity again. Just wanted to understand the employee opex increase that has happened Q-on-Q.

The employee opex increase this quarter is on account of the provision increase in our past services account, the liability that we've added on account of the change in the new wage code.

Sure. Lastly, just in terms of the customer behavior in terms of the slippage, those customers who are slipping into NPA.

A few quarters ago, it was explained that people don't spend much time in revolve, and as soon as there's some delinquency, they slip into NPA. Are we seeing any change there, or that behavior still continues?

No, these days actually, if you look at our entry rates, they are at almost, I would say, decadal low. The entry rates into the first bucket itself are very, very low.

You have seen already the credit cost is at this level, and hopefully, it will get moderated further.

Sure, sir.

Thank you for the opportunity. My question is related to operating and other expenses.

Can you explain why is it going up every quarter, and do you see it going up further given the festive season coming ahead?

The operating expenses have been growing in line with the business growth, both in terms of new card sourcing that we are doing quarter-on-quarter higher, and also the spends that the customers are making. There's a cost associated with that as well.

Yes, we do expect that as the festive season comes in, these expenses will be higher.

Understood. One suggestion on the same, given it is a large chunk of the expenses, if you could give breakup of the same in your quarterly updates?

We'll evaluate that. Thank you.

Okay. Thanks.

Hi. Thank you for the opportunity.

How should we look at your portfolio yield from where we are? See, cost of fund is a function of market rates.

On the yield side, what are the interventions that we can do, or what are the introductions that we can do such that assuming that the overall mix of product in receivable stays stable, still would we be able to hold the yield, or would we be able to kind of improve the yield? What is the strategy here so that we get some outlook on the NIM?

Yeah.

Yield, there are multiple strategies that you can follow for interest income. To go back to this conversation which has been happening, in fact, increasing credit lines, for example, is one such strategy for people who are already holding a installment lending book, okay, so that they can purchase more.

There are various strategies that we follow. We can do that.

At this point of time, as we had guided that we will continue to keep the yield in a broad range, and I think this is where it is going for this year.

Plus, any increase in COF, we also through benchmark change gets passed on to the incremental book that is being done. Okay.

Okay. Okay.

What we see in terms of the ECL rates having gone up Q-on-Q for stage one and stage three, and that is the, I think, outcome of the annual ECL review and refresh. When we go to the next year, having seen the recent pool behaving much better in terms of flows and delinquencies because I think the flows are indeed improving for us, is there a chance that next year we may also get some tailwind from the ECL model and refresh working in our favor?

See, there are two parts to it. One is the model itself, the other is the refresh of the data.

As you rightly said that the way we are seeing improvement in the asset quality, the data refresh will lead to release of ECL, which is already happening. Model refresh or review, which we do once in a year, we may go for some enhancement.

Normally, we will not relax the model. At most, we may do some kind of an enhancement.

Right now, we are very comfortable with the review that we have done, and we feel that we have a very robust ECL model right now. Whatever changes will happen during the year will happen because of the data refresh.

Got that. This 70 crore of extra provision or additional provision, is it a part of any of the stage one, two, three provision, or is it sitting outside somewhere?

See, hi. If you can see our presentation, we have clearly mentioned that there is a write-back on account of good credit quality or improved credit quality

of

65 crore. Asset quality or provision for stage two, three is not part of that.

70 crore, we have kept something in last quarter. We are just carrying it for this quarter.

It is

in stage one only, not for stage two. Understood.

Got it. It is a part of stage one.

Okay.

Okay.

Earlier it was 220 crore as of March as a part of stage one provision, then you consumed it for the ECL review and refresh, and now the remaining additional provision is 70 crore, again sitting in that stage one.

Yes, it is in stage one only.

Okay. Perfect.

Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you.

Ma'am, my question again, that follow-up question on corporate and retail spend. In last quarter, corporate spend percentage was 21.92%, and now it is 20.33%.

Is it continue that we can assume this good declining trend in corporate spend will continue?

See, we have given a range. It will be 20% plus minus, okay?

This is where we will be. Because these are customer-based things.

You can't monitor and you can't get the customer to spend if he's wanting to spend on the 31st of the month, okay? Okay.

Because from where our profitability will impact very much. In Q1 FY '26, this ratio is around 10% to 11% only.

Now it is around 20%, 21%. How management is targeting this?

Main question is how we can increase the retail spend? What management is doing to increase the retail spend part?

Good. I'll try and answer both.

If you look at that 10%, that was also because of a BBPS action which had happened. Before that, if you go back two years, it used to be in the range of around 20% or so.

While corporate remains around that, our endeavor, key endeavor is to increase the retail spends. Retail spends also, if you have looked, have grown by almost 14%

year

on year, okay? From a industry perspective, not only retail spends has increased, it is a number of transaction shares also has also gone up, okay?

We have been stating that consistently, it is because of the cautious I would say very focused strategy that we have employed towards the RuPay cards where we have increased the number of RuPay cards. Those RuPay cards attachment on the different PSPs has been done, and now we see the benefit of that in terms of number of transactions, spend increase, our focus on Tier 2, Tier 3 markets.

These all have actually helped us do all this stuff. Finally, last one thing which we have done is we have done a large tech investment in the company last year which we spoke about earlier on hyper-personalization.

The ability to contact the customer individually, give offers, and in fact, if you look at the data, the active rate of the customers have gone to 53%, okay, which has gone up by 1 percentage point, and this is existing customers. This helps increase the retail spends, and that will be our primary focus.

Okay.

Okay. Last question, sir.

In this current year, monsoon is not so good. How we are expecting this quarter?

After this quarter, definitely festival season will start. How we can expect Q2 in terms of retail spending?

As of now, we see the retail spending to be fairly strong. Festival is still far away.

Because of rains and monsoons, the final net result is yet to be seen. Whatever impact it has, as ma'am was also mentioning, the number of credit card penetration in the country is not that high as of now.

We have hardly 52 to 55 million customers in the country, and typically in Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3 cities. In the rural areas, they are very few customers or minimal customers there, the impact might not be seen immediately in the Q2, Q3.

In fact, it is running very strong as of now.

Okay. Sir.

Okay. Sir, last question.

Although we are tracking your company since very long, one question is always in our discussion that what is the total addressable market for credit card? Definitely, how much number of customer that whole industry is targeting?

Is there any number?

There are two ways to look at this addressable market. The first thing is because we are a subsidiary of State Bank of India, and the bank has almost 50 crore plus 53 crore plus customers.

Even if we take out people who are Jan Dhan accounts and where the support is being given to or the lower-limit, financially dependent customers, you still end up with at least 1.5 to 2 crore customers of the bank, which is still cardable in that sense, okay? The bank also has a large base of corporate salary package accounts, large base of home loan customers, and some of that data is in the public domain.

This is family silver that we work with. The other part, which is the open market, is you would have recently read that we have co-brands with Flipkart, which we tied up recently.

I'm just giving one co-brand example. Flipkart itself has close to more than 500 million customers on their transacting customers.

This is one part of the story from an addressable base perspective. The other thing is how many of them are credit tested and how big the files are.

If you talk to the credit bureaus and check with them, you would see that there is at least 350 to 400 million customers where the data is available, files are there, you can credit score those customers. The idea is to cross-tabulate.

The credit card industry is there's a lot of growth possible and available in the next decade.

You're expecting that 40 crores of customers--

just one question. Rental as a business model has started to come back.

If you can just kind of clarify as to whether this has opened for you as well, and correspondingly, how long should we wait for the instance-based fees to start moving higher? Thank you.

Mahesh, rental, the reason it got stopped was because there was no KYC being done for the end recipient, which is in this case the landlord. Wherever now some of these either in between gateways or PSPs or acquiring banks have started doing KYC and are getting the landlords acceptable, there the rentals have started, but that volume is very miniscule, minimal, okay?

That is we are not seeing any growth in that category. In fact, some of it was because it was being used as a cash out, which moved to certain other categories like education and couple of other categories where we later started levying fees also.

That has happened. The idea is not to let this become large and keep them under control.

This was not a idea of making a fee income from these things. This was more of a stopping an incorrect activity which was happening.

Got it. The direction of instance-based fees?

As of now, the instance-based fees is down primarily the reason is late fees, okay? Which has a consequent benefit which we have seen later on.

We believe that the instance-based fee it's going because once the base effect starts to come in, in H2 onwards, you will start seeing it go up, but not on account of late fee. Late fee will continue to remain at the level that it is.

Perfect. Just one clarification.

Across all the ticket sizes that you typically capture on your card portfolio, do you now see consistent improvement in asset quality across the board, or are there still some pockets which still worries you? That would be all.

Thank you.

Overall, the portfolio is showing resilience. There's no cohort per se which is giving us concern as of now.

Perfect, ma'am. Thank you.

Yes.

Just one follow-up. What should be the outlook on cost-to-income for the whole year?

Because there are multiple moving parts: the cost of fund, your acquisition is increasing of new customer, there is opex associated with it, and plus the festive is coming, you would have planned for your rewards and associated cost. What will be broader range for the cost-to-income ratio for the whole year?

Obviously the festive season will definitely see a higher cost-to-income, which is why we don't give you a quarter-on-quarter number, expected number on the cost-to-income. We'll give you a yearly number, which is

an

average of all the four quarters. It should be, and we indicated that in the last quarter, that should be in the range of about 56% to 58%.

Got it. Thank you.

Yeah.

ma'am. Thanks for the opportunity.

We've been hearing that particularly in Southern India, we see a lot of salaried IT people losing jobs. Any stress which you see over there?

No, no. Anand, we also heard it.

We also analyzed our portfolio. We, as I mentioned earlier also, there's no particular cohort where we see this kind of a stress.

Even for the IT sector, we did a separate analysis also. As of now, we are not seeing any concern.

We are monitoring.

Because on the ground, whatever check that we have done with multiple lenders and collection agencies, they tell us that basically about 300 to 400 basis point early bucket delinquencies has actually gone up in that pool.

So-- Not in our pool.

Nothing for you. Secondly, my question was on the margin front.

We have seen margins come off quarter-on-quarter. Where do we settle in terms of margin?

We have a pause on the rates as of now. Whether it should come down further, anything that we can do in terms of increasing the yield and try and protect our margins?

In terms of protecting the yield, definitely, we keep on doing a lot of interventions, and we will continue to do that. See, what Girish mentioned is that even when you are increasing your EMI component, the transactor portion is getting down, that also adds to the yield overall.

There are continuous monitoring and initiatives that we keep on undertaking. In terms of protecting the NIM or I would say NIM should be around this range only, Anand.

With the actions happening on the portfolio and smartly managing the COF, we should maintain the NIM around these levels. See, last quarter also, because the treasury rates hiked up quite a bit, but I would say that the company could manage the cost of funds pretty well that way.

We keep on doing those kind of things, looking at what is the source of funding which is with the best pricing that we can get, what are the terms, and we will continue to scan the market accordingly and protect the NIMs going forward as well.

Sure, ma'am. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Danish. I'm grateful to all our shareholders, customers, partners, and employees for their unwavering trust and support to SBI Card, and look forward to the same continued support in the current year.

Have a great evening. Thank you so much.