ICICI Bank on Saturday reported a 78 per cent rise in standalone net profits for the quarter ended June 2021 on the back of a sharp fall in provisions. The private sector lender posted a net profit of Rs 4,616.02 crore compared with Rs 2,599.15 crore in the same period of the previous year.

During the quarter, provisions at the lender declined to Rs 2,851.69 crore against Rs 7,593.95 crore in the year-ago period.

ICICI Bank said it has changed the policy on non-performing loans to make it more conservative. The change in policy resulted in higher provisions for non-performing advances amounting to Rs 1,127. The bank’s provisions would have been lower had it not implemented the new rule.

Based on the current assessment of the portfolio, the bank wrote back Covid-19 provisions amounting to Rs 1,050 crore made in the earlier periods.

The bank said the impact of the pandemic on credit quality and provisions is uncertain and will depend on the trajectory, progress and effectiveness of the vaccination programme.

As of June 2021, the bank had restructured loans worth Rs 3,891.15 crore of 5,510 accounts of which personal loans stood at Rs 924.74 crore and corporate loans at Rs 2,956.05 crore.

During the quarter, there was a slight deterioration in its asset quality with the percentage of gross non-performing assets (NPAs) to gross customer assets rising to 5.15 per cent from 4.96 per cent sequentially. It was, however, lower than 5.46 per cent in the same period of the previous year.

In absolute terms, gross NPAs rose to Rs 43,148.28 crore from Rs 41,373.42 crore in the January-March period.

The net interest income of the bank rose 18 per cent to Rs 10,936 crore from Rs 9,280 crore in the year-ago period.