Banks have an exposure of Rs 38,000 crore in Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Ltd (DHFL) which has now referred to the NCLT under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). DHFL?s consortium of lenders comprises close to 30 banks. Among the lenders are State Bank of India (SBI), Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Union Bank of India. SBI has the largest exposure of around Rs 10,000 crore.
DHFL owes Rs 84,000 crore to banks, MFs, insurers, provident funds and bond holders, including retail investors. Of this, unsecured debt is less than Rs 10,000 crore.
As of now, audit firm KPMG?s final forensic report is expected any time, and banks will make 100 per cent provisioning for DHFL–if the account is termed as a ?fraud? account by the Reserve Bank of India. It is now reported that KPMG has found huge amounts of loans that were sanctioned to entities, to be connected with the promoters in some way. This might mean that the banks will have to go back to their books and provision an NPA of as much as ?36,000 crore, practically the entire amount that they had lent to DHFL. This is because RBI insists that the banks must provision for the entire exposure to such firms, to be disclosed as doubtful debts on their books, pending resolution.
State-owned Union Bank of India, the lead bank of DHFL, has said its audit had indicated the company had diverted Rs 20,000 crore to shell companies. And if the account is termed as a fraud account following the KPMG report, then the banks will make entire provision of its exposure over the next four quarters. Lenders to DHFL will make provisions of somewhere worth Rs 6,300 crore for their exposure to DHFL for the December quarter.
Only about Rs 5,500 crore of provisions would be required if the KPMG report absolves DHFL of irregular lending. If DHFL is tagged as a fraud account that will create significant additional provisioning requirement and will further dent the profits of banks.
The mutual funds (MFs) will soon raise the issue in the three-member committee formed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to help the administrator in recovering about Rs 84,000 crore that DHFL owes to the system.
Now the whole process will depend upon the outcome of forensic audit report and further development in the resolution process.