TURNING THE TIDE

BUILDING A BANK OF GREATER SIGNIFICANCE: THAT'S THE VISION OF NIDHU SAXENA, MD AND CEO OF BANK OF MAHARASHTRA

- BY NAVNEET DUBEY

RESILIENCE-CHECK. Reinforcing valuesCheck. Sustainable and inclusive growth-Check.

Nidhu Saxena, MD and CEO of Bank of Maharashtra, is a happy man as he checks off the boxes that powered the bank's performance during the 2024-25 fiscal.

“The past year has been a defining period for us,” Saxena tells Fortune India. The future? Finding new strength in old values and leveraging innovation and inclusivity to drive growth. It will step into every major district that shows promising growth.

Saxena, sent in from Union Bank to head Bank of Maharashtra in March 2024, says the lender's journey out of the Reserve Bank of India’s Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) framework from 2017 to 2019 revealed its inherent character and capability. How the bank attracted RBI's PCA is another story.

The journey back was hard. “Those years of challenge were instrumental in shaping the bank’s current trajectory. We faced negative returns on assets, asset-quality pressures, and the twin balance sheet stress in the economy. But that phase made us stronger and more disciplined,” he says. The bank learnt to rebuild its fundamentals, strengthen governance, and focus on sustainable growth.

Bank of Maharashtra, a medium-sized bank, reported a total income of ₹28,424 crore in FY25. Profit after tax was ₹5,542 crore, a strong three-year annual growth rate of 68.7%, according to Capitaline data. Over the past three years, its income has grown at an average annual rate of 21.9%. Investors have also seen good returns, with the bank’s three-year average total shareholder return at 57%. The government holds 79.6%, while the public, FIIs and others hold the rest.