‘We have reversed declining CASA trends through various steps’

HOOTHUKUDI-BASED private bank Tamilnad Mercantile Bank (TMB) reported a rise of 5% in net profit and a flat growth in net interest income in Q2FY26. In an interaction with Sanal Sudevan, MD and CEO Salee Sukumaran Nair spoke on the bank’s quarterly performance, interest rate outlook and plans to ramp up Al adoption. Excerpts:

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What are the reasons for the growth of the bank? What is your growth target for the year-end?

We have put in a lot of effort in the last two-three quarters. The growth is slowly moving up. Earlier in FY25, we did underperform the market and at that time, I had said the bank’s performance would be in line with the market. But the second quarter results show we slightly outperformed the market. In the second half, we expect to do even better. We closed the quarter with 11.40% in business growth — 12.32% deposit growth and 10.34% growth in advances. We expect to close the year with a 13% deposit growth and 14-15% growth in advances. CASA has been a worry for the industry and for us. We have taken initiatives like transaction business group (TBG), elite services group and online current account opening, which have resulted in CASA share increasing 58 bps to 27.36%. The CASA growth in Q2 was 5.22% QoQ and 9.3% YoY.

What is your target for NIM for next quarter and financial year? Do you expect a repo cut in the next MPC meeting?