Indian Bank plans online auction

Public sector lender Indian Bank on Thursday announced plans to conduct an online auction of pledged properties, next month.

Indian Bank Managing Director and CEO M K Jain said that next month, the bank has planned to auction online the properties mortgaged relating to around 280 accounts.
He said that the amount lent by the bank to the 280 loan accounts will to the tune of about Rs 600 crore.

Stating that the bank’s auction next month would be on a consolidated basis, Jain said that the bank has created a separate vertical to look into loan accounts above Rs 1 crore and monitor them closely.

Jain said that the bank has already started sending SMS messages to borrowers, reminding them of the loan repayments due from them.

“Indian Bank achieved a total business (deposits and advances) of Rs 3,00,436 crore (deposits Rs 1,75,438 crore, advances Rs 1,24,998 crore) during the first quarter of the current year,” he said.

According to him, the bank curtailed the increase of non-performing assets (NPA) to Rs 145 crore during the quarter under review — the lowest in the last 12 quarters.
The bank shed high cost deposits to the tune of Rs 2,585 crore to reduce its deposit cost to 6.94 per cent, said Jain.

The bank closed the first quarter with a net profit of Rs 215 crore, up from Rs 207 crore logged in the same period previous year.