Conference Call with Kotak Mahindra Bank Management and Analysts on Q4FY20 Earnings Performance and Outlook. Listen in to the full earnings transcript. 

Remarks from Uday Kotak, Managing Director of Kotak Mahindra Bank

• Looks like Covid is likely to stay here for longer than we expected. There is no immediate cure or vaccine - we will have to continue and deal with it at least for a while.

• While lockdowns may be necessary from a health perspective, is that lockdowns have an exponential cost to the economy. We need to move to a gradually normalizing economy. There is a wide variation in expectation in economic cost from the lockdowns - from 1.9% from the IMF to other estimates coming in at over -5%. 

• Our focus going forward? 1) Strong balance sheet: this has significant weightage in terms of strategy 2) Strong and trusted deposit franchise. We are good on both sides. Our deposits grew at 20%. 86% of our deposits are CASA deposits. 

• In the post covid world we need to look at our lending business in a different manner 1) Which sectors 2) Cautious on individual companies with high fixed operating costs 3) Cautious on businesses with high leverage. 

• Guaranteed loans from the government would help us grow in those cases. 

• Focused on customer acquisition on the digital route. We are adding 14,000 new customer accounts everyday through our digital acquisition channel. We will spend more on technology rather than less. 

• We are also flexible on the kind of segments we lend to, rather than follow the herd. 

• On customer franchise - we see an opportunity to grow this in the non credit side. 

• We see the financial sector as it navigates through this turbulence going through a consolidation phase as we go forward. We will continue focus on navigating through this time. At the same time we will keep an eye on potential opportunities here.