Mumbai: The joint venture floated by Centrum Group and digital payments startup Bharatpe for launching a small finance bank will infuse Rs 1,800 crore capital into troubled Punjab & Maharashtra Cooperative Bank (PMC) on its merger with the proposed bank, a top Centrum official has said.
Last Friday, the Reserve Bank gave an in-principle approval to Centrum Financial Services, a step-down arm of the diversified financial services group, to set up a small finance bank (SFB) provided it took over the troubled PMC Bank.
The in-principle approval has been in specific pursuance to Centrum Financial Services' offer on February 1, 2021 in response to the expression of interest notification dated November 3, 2020 published by the PMC Bank, the RBI said.
This paves the way for ending nearly two anxious years for the PMC depositors whose over Rs 10,723 crore are still stuck in the crippled cooperative bank that has been under RBI administrator since September 2019.
To launch SFB, the Centrum Group has sewed up an equal joint venture with Resilient Innovations, an arm of Gurugram-based Bharatpe. But Centrum Capital will be the promoter of SFB, under the prevailing laws, the group said.
"We (the SFB joint venture) have set aside Rs 1,800 crore for the SFB, which eventually will be pumped into PMC once the government scheme for merger is notified. Of the Rs 1,800 crore, Rs 900 crore will be invested in the first year by the joint venture split equally between the two and the remaining capital in stages," Jaspal Bindra, executive chairman of Centrum Group, said. Whether they will take over the more than Rs 6,500 crore of NPAs of PMC and also the over Rs 10,700 crore of its deposits, Bindra said that will be known only after the government notified the merger scheme.
"What terms and conditions the government will set in the merger scheme will decide the fate of huge bad loans and losses. In fact, this is the only little unknown we have as of now," Bindra quipped. That the groups have allocated nine-times more capital over the RBI mandate of Rs 200 crore for the SFB shows the seriousness of the promoters. If it succeeds, this will be the first SFB in nearly six years -- the first set of SFB licences were issued in August 2016, when the monetary authority also made such licensing on-tap.
Bindra, who was the group executive director and chief executive for Asia Pacific at Standard Chartered Bank till 2015, joined Centrum in April 2016 as executive chairman and picked up around 25 per cent, also said they will surrender all their NBFC licences before launching the SFB. "The RBI has given us 120 days to complete the other fit and proper conditions to seek the final licence, which I am very confident of meeting well in time. In fact, we will be seeking the final licence as soon as possible, he said.
Asked he chose a startup to form an equal joint venture for its banking foray, Bindra said, for one, very few players have the technological edge that Bharatpe has.
"For another, we've been having strong business relationships with the Gurugram startup since the very first day of its operations."