Private banks under ICAI scanner for misreporting bad loans

The apex body of chartered accountants, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), sought information from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) regarding divergence in bad loan estimates by the top private sector banks, reports livemint.com.

The report said that the 2015-16 financial statements of Axis Bank and Yes Bank’s will be taken up for review by ICAI’s Financial Reporting Review Board (FRRB). FRRB may also undertake a review of ICICI Bank's financial statement.

RBI has carried out an inspection of banks’ book and found significant divergence in the asset quality classification in their financial reports.

If the divergence exceeds 15 percent then banks have to make a disclosure in their financial statements, RBI told banks last month.

Yes Bank in its 2016-17 annual report classified bad loans of Rs 748.9 crore, whereas RBI pegged the number higher by Rs 4,176 crore, a variation of 558 percent. Similarly, Axis Bank’s bad loan were higher by Rs 9,478 crore and ICICI Bank by Rs 5,105 crore from the disclosure made in the annual report.

RBI typically conducts inspection audits after a bank has released its annual results and a statutory audit has taken place. Experts were quoted as saying that while it is not odd for the RBI to point out divergences, this is the first time that the regulator has asked lenders to make this public. #csansaar (Source - MoneyControl)