Equitas Small Finance Bank: Collection Efficiency for the month of May at 77.84%

Mumbai, June 04, 2021:

Collection Efficiency for the month of May at 77.84%

Billing Efficiency for the month of May at 66.97%

Table A:  Collection & Billing Efficiency Product Wise:

1. Collection efficiency represents total collections during the month as a percentage of that month’s total EMIs due
2. Billing efficiency represents only the EMIs of that month alone collected as a percentage of that month’s total EMIs due.
3. The month’s total EMIs includes EMIs of accounts that are in NPA also and not just standard assets

Table B:  Collection & Billing Efficiency Product Wise: (Non NPA)

 The difference between Table A and Table B is that in Table B, the denominator which represents the total EMI due for that particular month consists of EMIs due of all accounts which are standard only.  The EMIs due from NPA accounts are not added in the denominator in Table B.

 Table 3:  X Bucket Collection Efficiency:

X bucket means those accounts which are not having any overdue as at the end of previous month.  X bucket collection efficiency represents collections of that particular month’s EMI from such X bucket accounts during that particular month divided by total EMIs from all such X bucket accounts

Commenting on the collection trends, Mr. P N Vasudevan, Managing Director and CEO of Equitas Small Finance Bank said:

In view of the lockdowns in different parts of the country, normal commercial life has been disrupted.  Our customers who are majorly small traders and business people engaged in daily use products were unable to open their shop and their livelihood has been accordingly impacted.

Our conscious plan to grow the unsecured microfinance book at a slower pace compared to the rest has helped mitigate the overall credit cost impact on the bank.  As of 31^st March 2021, the unsecured microfinance advances were 18% while the remaining 81% were secured loans.  The least impacted product which is Small Business Loans secured by house property constitutes 45% of the total advances.

Last year we had seen as much as 90% by the number of clients and 98% by value avail moratorium in April ’20 but post-September ’20, we had seen a strong pick up in collection efficiency and ended the year with March ’21 at pre-covid level collection efficiencies.

As and when the severity of Wave 2 recedes from the country and life comes back to normal, our customers are expected to bounce back quickly since they deal largely in daily use products and services.  We are beginning to see some relaxations in the lockdowns in June and hope that 2^nd quarter would be largely back to normal.

We will be studying the impact of stress created by wave 2 on our customers and any possible restructuring they may require to help revive their livelihood.

As a country, we need to guard against a possible 3^rd wave of pandemics.  While wearing masks and maintaining distance is important, large-scale vaccinations are currently believed to be the only long-term tool available to us to protect ourselves against any such future waves.

We, at Equitas, have been doing our significant bit towards working with various State and Local Governments in a mass mobilising people for vaccination camps across the country.  We have so far helped organise 656 vaccination camps across the country and helped vaccinate around 42,800 people who are all from the low-income segments.