City Union Bank Managing Director and CEO N. Kamakodi says that they are seeing better visibility on growth numbers from conventional areas and new avenues will definitely help to add extra growth numbers.

Following the successful launch of MSME digital secured lending model, City Union Bank is planning to expand it to housing, affordable home loan, loan against property (LAP) and micro LAP segments in the fourth quarter, said a top executive.

Right now, the private sector lender is building capacity as well as human resources to support its retail credit growth, said its MD & CEO N. Kamakodi during an analysts call.

“The growth so far has come purely from our traditional MSME and gold loans. The new retail vertical, that we are in the process of building, should help us to get some more incremental advance growth,” he said.

Asserting that the preparatory works are under way with regard to the soft launch of retail vertical, he said that by the beginning of the Q4, the executive team and the grass root level people will be in place. Some amount of contribution to the business will start coming from Q4 onwards and significant contribution from next financial year.

“We are not entering into the unsecured (retail lending) in a big way. Our entire start in the retail is going to be on the secured retail lending portfolio per se. And, let’s say, 4-5 years down the line, it will be about 4-5% of the portfolio, the focus will be mainly on the secured lending space. So we are continuing with that,” he said.

Mr. Kamakodi said that on a sequential basis, advances increased by more than ₹2,100 crore, a 5% growth in Q2, and CUB achieved the double-digit growth consecutively in the last two quarters.

“We are seeing better visibility on growth numbers from our conventional areas and new avenues will definitely help us to add extra growth numbers, which will be available going forward in the future,” he said.