India's second largest public sector lender, the Punjab National Bank, has impounded passports of 150 wilful loan defaulters apart from lodged 37 FIRs against those who aren't repaying, as part of its recovery drive. In a statement it said, “The bank has already declared 1,084 wilful defaulters and published photos of 260 such defaulters in newspapers. Due to PNB's aggressive stance towards wilful defaulters, 150 passports have been impounded over the past few months.”
PNB Managing Director Sunil Mehta said the bank is hopeful on recovery of loans to improve its financial position. It has been hit with a £1.4 billion fraud by diamond traders Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi. The bank is also looking to leverage data for loan recovery and risk management through a tie-up with an external agency. The statement said, “This partnership is a part of the larger strategy to deploy technology to strengthen internal systems. This partnership will not only help the bank with loan recovery, but will also help identify and automate profitable lending strategies and minimise credit and fraud risk.”
It said the two special one-time settlement schemes have already helped accelerate recovery of bad debt, with the average rising from 70,000 to 80,000 NPA accounts a year to 2,25,000 accounts during the last 10 months. The schemes apply to small NPA accounts helping defaulters come out of debt.
