jaipur the pink citybased au small finance bank on friday said strong loan sales and better asset quality have helped it post a strong set of financial numbers with a 68 growth in net profit for three months to december 2021fundbased disbursements increased 33 in the reporting quarter to rs 8152 crore as the operating environment normalised while the nonfund disbursements jumped 54 to rs 627 crore the bank said in a statementits overall assets under management jumped 26 per cent to rs 42023 crore in the december 2021 quarterthe banks gross advances rose 33 to rs 40719 crore from rs 30523 crorewhat has helped bottomline profit more was a full 89basis point bp reduction in the cost of funds to 59 giving better margins or net interest margin at 63 and also the improved asset quality gross npas fell 60 bps or rs 94 crore to 26 or rs 1058 crore from rs 1151 crore or 32 net npas improved by 40 bps to 13 of net advancesyet the bank made a buffer provisioning of rs 300 crore which is 75 bps of net advances its lowcost deposit ratio or casa current account saving account improved to 39 from 22 a year ago boosting the overall deposits by 49 to rs 44278 crore from rs 29708 croreits managing director and ceo sanjay agarwal attributed the robust numbers to the significant improvement in the overall business environment resulting in strong disbursements and much better collection efficiency which stood at 106 during the quarter up from 97 for the same period last yearthese factors along with the secured nature of our loan book led to a significant asset quality improvement along with continued improvement across other key focus areas such as improving the granularity of the deposit base healthy asset growth driven by smallticket secured loans increasing adoption of digital properties and credit card offerings he saidthe fundbased disbursements of rs 8152 crore which rose from rs 6115 crore in the same quarter of the previous year included eclgs of rs 48 crore in the third quarter au bank is the largest small finance bank with 880 touchpoints serving 237 lakh customers in 15 states and two union territories it has an employee base of over 25500 agencies