Fairfax not to cut CSB Bank stake in five years

Private sector lender CSB Bank plans to become a mid-sized new age bank by 2030, its managing director and chief executive officer PRALAY MONDAL said. In a telephonic interview with Shine Jacob he discussed the bank's roadmap, reducing the share of gold loans, and the recent Fairfax stake sale. Edited excerpts:

- Shine Jacob

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) came out with a notification flagging irregular practices in gold loans and asked lenders to take remedial measures in a time-bound manner. What will be the impact of this on your loan growth in this segment?

Almost 45-50 per cent of our portfolio has been in gold. We have been very proactive and have been engaging with the regulators regularly. Hence, we have been working on most of these points that came on the September 30 circular. As of today, we almost tick all the boxes on that. The only thing we have to do more is to increase our rigor of audit.

We have grown in value by 28 per cent and in tonnage by around 9-10 per cent in the second quarter. This means the real growth is 10 per cent and the rest is because of the price increase happening in the ecosystem and we don't take that as the real growth. Because of the global predictions, gold prices do not seem to be under any kind of risk in the next 12-18 months.