Allahabad Bank retains its conservative growth strategy

Present de facto CEO continues to adopt bottomline growth strategy introduced by his predecessor.

Allahabad Bank is likely to persist with its conservative growth strategy that emphasises on bottomline growth rather than all-out balance sheet expansion.

Like what it did over the past 14 months, the Kolkata-based bank will maintain its focus largely on high-yielding advances and low-cost deposits, at least for the time being, as reported in Economic Times.

The bank was following the strategy over the past one year or so under its erstwhile chief KR Kamath, and the present management is all for pursuing the plan. Not surprisingly, as the strategy has paid rich dividends in trying times. The bank has just reported an eight-fold jump in net profit for the quarter to 30 September 2009 over the correspondent period in 2008.

Allahabad Bank's executive director JP Dua, who is now officiating as the de facto chief in the absence of a regular chairman and managing director told ET, "We will continue with the same strategy that we have been following for the past 14 months. During the period, we have consciously been focusing on high-yielding advances and low-cost deposits. During this time, all the important financial ratios like net interest margin and yield on advances have shown a positive trend."