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BoB expects deposits to grow at 9-11%, loans to rise 11-13%: Debadatta Chand, CEO

Debadatta Chand had the proverbial baptism by fire as CEO at India’s second largest public sector lender, Bank of Baroda (BoB), hit by the controversy over the financier’s attachment notice on actor and MP Sunny Deol just a couple of months into the top job. Then came the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) curbs on its digital banking application, restrictions that took nearly seven months to be lifted.

But after a trying first year, Chand has eased into the corner-room job, seeking consistency in the bank's business matrix and reducing the lender's dependency on costlier wholesale deposits. In a detailed interview with ET, Chand spoke about BoB’s current positioning and shared his outlook for what's traditionally known as a corporate-focused lender.

You will complete two years at the helm in June. How has BoB shaped up in this time?

The bank is doing extremely well. Fundamentally, it is a strong bank. For the past two years, the performance has been consistent, and the outlook is stable. Earlier we (had) talked about how to double the business in 5-6 years and how to maintain margin in a dynamic market scenario. The performance has been very satisfying. The balance sheet strategy is to not to be heavily dependent on the bulk deposit. Our RAM (retail, agriculture MSME) is going very strong. We decided to go slow on fine priced corporate loans. We are capturing market share in retail loans and deposits.

the domestic market, we are expanding into micro markets where there is potential. For example, Panvel has come up much better, like any other part of Mumbai. A bank of this size has lesser presence in Southern and Eastern geographies of India. There is a case for expanding the network there. We had a mandate to open 300 branches in 2024-25. Of this, we opened almost 200 branches. The remaining will be opened in the new financial year.