After a steady increase in bad loans, India’s largest private sector lender ICICI Bank has decided to tighten its corporate lending growth and apply breaks on growing its corporate books.
According to a presentation made to investors in March, the bank has decided to limit the growth in corporate loans (including international) to about 10 per cent year-on-year (y-o-y). This comes at a time when after several quarters of single-digit growth in corporate book, the bank had finally begun to see an uptick in corporate loans. Among private-sector lenders, ICICI Bank has the largest corporate loan book, which at the end of the quarter ended December 2015 was at 28.8 per cent out of the Rs 4,34,800-crore loan book.