The war is for CASA and to be more specific, granular retail CASA because its 1. Low cost and 2. Sticky. The avg FD value is many multiples that of the SA balance for the same customer which makes it rate sensitive. FDs are a rate play and with no/ minimal premat charges, customers move if they get a higher rate elsewhere. The same customer doesn’t move the SA balance because the rate differential impact is lower due to the smaller ticket size. A granual retail book is sticky which makes it great for banks to manage the asset liability balance and secures their book from massive swings unless there’s a run on the bank. This is why CASA ratio and especially retail CASA is such a key metric when studying banks. You also see this in customer category with senior citizens, NRIs and Corporate salary accounts being the moat sought after as they are sticky in nature.
Fwiw, RBI publishes the total deposits held by banks across the 3 categories every quarter. I haven’t tracked it in ages but one can check the growth of SA, CA and FD there. I’ll be surprised if FD isn’t the fastest growing and that’s the problem banks are facing.
Agree on the broader point about deposits being hit due to the equity boom being nonsense by the way. It’s just a convenient story but doesn’t hold much weight.
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