HDFC Bank
HDFC Bank’s transformation of its micro, small and medium-sized enterprise (MSME) business over the past few years makes it a worthy winner of this award.
That focus on MSMEs continues under the bank’s new CEO, Sashidhar Jagdishan, who succeeded Aditya Puri in October 2020.
The numbers are impressive. Advances to MSMEs stood at Rs2.02 trillion ($28 billion) as of December 31, 2020, up 38% from a year earlier and representing a compound annual growth rate of 23% in the past six years, which HDFC says makes it India’s second-largest bank for MSME lending.
The bank’s management also believes the MSME lending book will soon be larger than the bank’s corporate book.
In its wholesale banking department, the MSME business became the second-largest revenue contributor last year. But the push towards SME clients – under Rahul Shukla, group head of corporate banking and business banking – has not come at the expense of quality. Asset quality has remained strong despite the impact of Covid-19 on businesses. The bank’s MSME-related non-performing asset (NPA) ratio was 0.7%