NBFCs' wholesale book under severe stress: Crisil

05 Feb 2020 Evaluate

Domestic ratings agency Crisil in its latest report has warned of potentially high stress in non-banking financial companies’ (NBFCs) wholesale book well above the reported bad loan numbers by March, indicating rising risks to their retail books. It noted that almost all the NBFCs have been under severe liquidity stress since the collapse of one of the biggest, IL&FS in September 2018. It pointed out that the crisis has been so bad that the third largest home finance player DHFL has been sent to bankruptcy courts, also because of the large fraud alleged to have committed by its management.

According to the report, the spike in bad loans is being driven by the realty books, which has almost trebled as of the September 2019 quarter to 10 percent. But it is not the traditional segments-retail books -- where the material concerns lie. It is the wholesale loan book where more significant slippages are expected to manifest as portfolios come out of moratorium. The crisis in the wholesale books will be led more by real estate and structured credit, which comprise only 16 percent of the total assets of NBFCs at Rs 3.8 lakh crore as of March 2019.

The report further said that these segments are experiencing heightened headwinds as financial flexibility of many underlying operating companies in this space and realtors have been impacted due to the overall slowdown. Moreover, it said a major chunk of the loan book is under moratorium and that means NPAs could jump when loans come out of it. It stated that the reported NPAs in the realty segment is estimated to have increased to 3.3 percent as of September 2019, from 1.8 percent as of March 2019. About 40 percent of the book, including lease rental discounting, was still under moratorium as of September 2019.

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