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Seeking to woo investors during ongoing stock market volatility, Punjab National Bank is launching a campaign for a special recurring deposit scheme promising assured returns. The move comes as the state-owned lender posted a record quarterly net profit of over ₹5,500 crore for Q2 FY27, shrugging off a drop in treasury income.

“We are planning to launch the RD scheme. We have the RD scheme, but we are going to popularise this now considering what is happening in the stock market,” Ashok Chandra, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Bank, told reporters in a virtual briefing which announcing the quarterly results.  Further, he said: “This is the right time to pitch this product and provide the safe return to all the customers and all the depositors.”

When asked about the less than 5 per cent growth in operating profit despite a nearly 13 per cent increase in net profit in the second quarter of the current fiscal, he said:

“This is mainly on account of lower treasury income. Last financial year, during the same period, our treasury profit was ₹1,769 crore but this quarter it is only ₹753 crore.” A shortfall of ₹1,000 crore lowered that growth rate. “If I add that, I think operating profit would have crossed more than ₹8,500 crore,” he said.

Further, he said that against the guidance of credit growth of 12-13 per cent, it is likely to be 13-14 per cent in the full year. And because of rate hike, net interest margin (NIM) could improve by 6-7 basis points during the ongoing quarter.

For the whole year, the guidance for NIM remains at 2.6-2.7 per cent. “What we are aiming that our global NIM also should cross this trajectory. Already, our domestic NIM has touched 2.74 and the global NIM is around 2.58. I am expecting that somewhere around 2.7, global NIM also should touch my end of this,” Chandra said.

On raising funds from overseas investors, Chandra said the bank will raise $1 billion under its Medium-Term Note (MTN) Programme. The bank is waiting for an opportune time to mobilise the funds, he said.

On asset quality, the bank’s gross non-performing assets (NPAs) moderated to 2.55 per cent of gross advances at the end of September 2026, down from 3.45 per cent a year ago. Similarly, net NPAs, or bad loans, fell to 0.25 per cent at the end of September 2026, down from 0.36 per cent at the end of September 2025. During the quarter, the bank has made a floating provision of ₹125 crore aggregating to ₹2,560 crore. The additional provision will help meet Expected Credit Loss (ECL) guidelines to kick in from April 1, he said, adding that the additional provision helped in improving PCR.

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