Gautam Chhugani, who was recently in the news for being the lone bear on ICICI Bank stock, has said that “juicy” fee income charged for the loans offered have been ailing Indian lenders. India has a distinct corporate landscape with promoter/owner managed organisations, as the lending practices in corporate banks have been based on relationships, the analyst at investment firm Bernstein told ETCFO in an email interview. “The fee income charged by the bankers for loans was extremely juicy and they added straight to the bottom-line.

Good bottom-line translates to life changing ESOPs and bonuses, so bankers don't know where to draw the line on prudence,” said Chhugani. Click here for full interview“Therefore, in private sector, the problem is of unchecked personal ambitions,” he added. Bloomberg had recently reported that among the 54 ICICI analysts tracked it, Bernstein's Gautam Chhugani was the only one who believes India's second-largest private sector bank is a sell. “The government needs to clearly work on incentive structures within state-owned banks for the top leadership as well as across the organisation,” believes Chhugani. On future of technology in banks, Chhugani said payments business is gone almost completely fintech. “UPI, Paytm and other tech players such as WhatsApp and Amazon will take the juice out of payments business,” he added. Chhugani also sees cryptocurrencies impacting operations of international money transfer, equity and bond markets and other global consensus protocols. “Blockchain as a technology will affect banking but cryptocurrencies, in my view, would cause long term business model alteration,” he said.