April 27 (Reuters) – India’s SBI Cards and Payment Services reported a fourth-quarter profit rise on Monday, helped by improving asset quality and higher spending.
The firm has tightened underwriting over the last few quarters to tackle higher delinquencies in credit cards.
Here are key points from the company’s earnings report:
• Credit card firm, a unit of State Bank of India, said its profit after tax rose 14% to 6.09 billion rupees ($64.67 million).
• Total revenue from operations rose 5.6% year-on-year to 49.35 billion rupees.
• Total card spending rose 31% on-year to 1.15 trillion rupees.
• Cards-in-force, or the sum of all credit cards issued, rose 6% from last year to 22.1 million.
• Gross non-performing assets at 2.41%, down 67 basis points from a year earlier and 46 bps from the previous quarter.
• Impairment losses and bad loans charges dropped 12% to 10.97 billion rupees
• Net interest margin decreased 10 basis points from a year ago to 11.1%.
• “Higher PAT driven by improved credit cost,” SBI Card said in a statement.($1 = 94.1775 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Bipasha Dey and Nishit Navin in Bengaluru; Editing by Harikrishnan Nair)