LIC pares stake in PSBs in March quarter

Life Insurance Corporation (LIC), the largest investor in state-owned lenders, continues to trim its exposure in most of them. On a quarter on quarter basis, the insurer has pared its investments in all state-run lenders, except Punjab & Sind Bank and Indian Bank.

While its holding in Indian Bank remained unchanged at 1.32% from the beginning of October 2017 to March 2018, LIC made a fresh investment in Punjab & Sind Bank, taking a 7.44% stake in the lender, data sourced from Capitaline revealed.

The insurance major was seen reducing stake aggressively in 11 public sector banks (PSBs) which are under the RBI’s Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) farmework. Of the 10 PSBs, which saw an at least 3-percentage-point reduction in LIC holdings over the March quarter, eight are under PCA.

These 11 PSBs under the RBI radar over the issue of non-performing assets account for over Rs 3.5 lakh crore in bad loans of the total Rs 9 lakh crore across listed public sector banks. The net loss of these banks rose over three fold to Rs 26,084 crore in three months that ended March 2018 from a year ago.

LIC has reduced its stake in most PSBs with Dena Bank seeing the biggest reduction of nearly seven percentage points (ppts) since the beginning of 2018. This was followed by Corporation Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC) and Bank of Maharashtra, where the insurer reduced its exposure anywhere between 5 ppts to 5.88 ppts.

LIC Housing Finance Ltd