HDFC Bank has won the Best Asian Bank Award 2015 instituted by Finance Asia. The bank won the award for generating high growth and steady profitability as well as maintaining a low non-performing loans ratio and high asset quality. Sukarm Bali, chief executive of HDFC Bank Hong Kong, accepted the award in Hong Kong. Finance Asia described HDFC Bank as one of India’s largest financial institutions and the country’s most profitable and well-run private bank, with $85.6 billion in assets including $53 billion in loans for the fiscal year ending in March. It has a reputation for stringent lending standards. Net non-performing loans were only 0.27% of assets for fiscal 2014, in stark contrast to most Indian peers, which are grappling with bad loans. The Mumbai-based bank boasts an impressive multiyear history of steady earnings gains, partially thanks to low-cost deposits. Return on assets meanwhile are 2%, as high as they have been over the past decade and a half, and the bank has been delivering steady net profit growth of at least 20% in the past eight quarters even when economic expansion was sluggish because of a pick-up in retail credit growth.
