ICICI Bank vs SBI (2026): ROA, NIM, Credit Cost, Scale & Which Is Better?
One bank earns more than twice as much from every rupee of assets. Yet their ROE is almost identical.
That apparent contradiction is the most important thing to understand about ICICI Bank versus SBI.
ICICI Bank reported Q1 FY2027 return on assets of approximately 2.49%.
SBI reported only 1.11%.
Yet SBI generated ROE of 17.87%, slightly above ICICI's roughly 17.1%.
The explanation is balance-sheet architecture.
ICICI earns a much wider spread and carries more equity capital.
SBI earns a thinner spread but operates an enormous, more leveraged deposit franchise.
The ROA-ROE Paradox
A bank can generate excellent shareholder returns in two broad ways.
Method one: earn a lot from every rupee of assets.
Method two: operate a larger asset base relative to shareholder equity.
ICICI leans more heavily on method one.
SBI uses more of method two.
This distinction matters because leverage amplifies both good and bad banking outcomes.
ICICI Bank vs SBI: Q1 FY2027 scoreboard
| Metric | ICICI Bank | State Bank of India | Current Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standalone PAT | ₹14,805 Cr | ₹21,121 Cr | SBI absolute |
| PAT growth | +15.9% | +10.2% | ICICI |
| NII | ₹24,384 Cr | ₹46,992 Cr | SBI absolute |
| NII growth | +12.7% | ~+14.9% | SBI |
| Deposits | ₹18.34 lakh Cr | ₹60.06 lakh Cr | SBI scale |
| Deposit growth | +14.0% | +9.73% | ICICI |
| Advances | ₹16.31 lakh Cr | ₹50.47 lakh Cr | SBI scale |
| Advance growth | +19.6% | +18.63% | ICICI slightly |
| CASA | 38.1% average CASA | 39.24% period-end CASA | Similar, definitions differ |
| NIM | 4.36% | 3.00% domestic / 2.86% whole bank | ICICI |
| ROA | 2.49% | 1.11% | ICICI |
| ROE | ~17.1% | 17.87% | SBI slightly |
| GNPA | 1.38% | 1.47% | ICICI slightly |
| NNPA | 0.35% | 0.38% | ICICI slightly |
| Credit cost | ~0.32% | 0.27% | SBI |
| Capital adequacy | 16.84% | 15.67% | ICICI |
| CET1 | 16.19% | 12.89% | ICICI |
| Q1 fee income | ₹7,286 Cr, +23.5% | Large diversified fee base; not directly disclosed on identical basis here | ICICI disclosed growth |
| Branches | 7,608 | Significantly larger national network | SBI distribution scale |
| Late-August P/E | ~18x | ~12-13x | SBI lower |
| Late-August P/B | ~3x | ~1.6x | SBI lower |
ICICI's 4.36% NIM is the foundation of its ROA advantage
The bank earns significantly more net interest income from each rupee of earning assets than SBI.
NIM increased slightly from both Q4 FY2026 and the year-earlier quarter.
This is especially notable because much of the Indian banking sector has been dealing with margin pressure from deposit competition and monetary transmission.
ICICI did not merely preserve its margin.
It simultaneously accelerated loan growth to almost 20%.
Loan growth is broad rather than concentrated in one fashionable category
Total loans increased 19.6% year on year.
Important sub-segments included:
- Retail: +12.0%.
- Business banking: +28.2%.
- Rural: +35.4%.
- Domestic corporate: +18.5%.
This matters because a bank growing 20% through only credit cards and unsecured personal loans would have a very different risk profile.
ICICI's deposit growth did not keep pace with loans
Deposits grew 14% while loans grew 19.6%.
That pushed the credit-deposit ratio higher.
This is not an immediate balance-sheet problem.
It is the main constraint investors should watch.
A bank cannot outgrow its liability franchise forever without eventually paying more for funding.
The remarkable part is that ICICI maintained NIM while stretching the funding engine
Average deposits increased 14% and average CASA remained around 38.1%.
The bank has also been active in overseas funding markets during 2026.
That gives ICICI another liquidity channel.
Funding diversification helps.
It does not replace a granular domestic deposit franchise.
Fee income is becoming another ROA engine
Q1 fee income increased 23.5% to ₹7,286 crore.
Approximately 72% of fees came from retail, rural and business-banking customers.
This is valuable because fee income does not require the same amount of balance-sheet capital as lending.
A customer can generate economics from:
- Payments.
- Cards.
- Transaction banking.
- Distribution.
- Wealth products.
- Trade finance.
Higher fee intensity can increase ROA without increasing credit risk proportionally.
ICICI is also carrying unusually large contingency reserves
The bank held ₹13,100 crore of contingency provisions at June 2026.
It also held additional standard-asset provision connected with the agricultural portfolio.
These reserves create an earnings cushion against future stress.
They also mean current capital strength is not being created by aggressively minimising provisions.
ICICI's bad-loan stock remains exceptionally clean
GNPA was 1.38% and NNPA 0.35%.
Gross NPA additions fell year on year.
Resolution exposure continued to decline.
The performing corporate book rated BB and below remains very small relative to the overall balance sheet.
This is a major contrast with the historical ICICI Bank of the previous corporate-credit cycle.
SBI's scale is difficult to appreciate until the deposit number is written out
More than ₹60 lakh crore of deposits.
ICICI Bank has approximately ₹18.34 lakh crore.
SBI therefore operates a deposit franchise more than three times larger.
Its loan book exceeds ₹50 lakh crore.
That makes SBI one of the largest financial distribution systems in the country, not simply another PSU bank.
Why does SBI earn only 1.11% ROA despite that scale?
The primary reason is thinner spread economics.
Whole-bank NIM was 2.86%.
Domestic NIM was 3.00%.
ICICI earns 4.36%.
The gap is more than 130 basis points.
Applied to trillions of rupees of assets, that difference creates enormous profit-per-asset divergence.
But SBI's low-cost deposit franchise keeps the model economically powerful
CASA represented approximately 39.24% of total deposits.
CASA deposits themselves exceeded ₹22 lakh crore.
Few banks anywhere can replicate that funding base.
SBI's customer relationships include:
- Government salary accounts.
- Pension accounts.
- Rural households.
- Large corporates.
- SMEs.
- Home-loan borrowers.
- Digital YONO customers.
The franchise is simultaneously commercial infrastructure and national financial infrastructure.
SBI loan growth has accelerated dramatically
Gross advances increased 18.63% year on year.
The growth was broad:
- Retail: +15.15%.
- Corporate: +18.05%.
- SME: +22.33%.
- Agriculture: +25.43%.
- Foreign offices: +21%+ in rupee terms.
This is growth at a scale where each percentage point represents tens of thousands of crores of incremental lending.
SBI's current funding gap is larger than ICICI's
Loans grew approximately 18.6% while deposits grew only 9.7%.
The divergence is substantial.
It is one reason SBI has been actively raising foreign-currency deposits and funding during the RBI's concessional swap window.
Management has discussed an ambitious FCNR(B) mobilisation target.
The strategy can lower effective funding cost.
It does not eliminate the structural need for domestic deposit growth to accelerate.
Why hasn't faster SBI lending damaged asset quality?
Because the existing loan book continues to clean up.
GNPA declined to approximately 1.47% from 1.83% a year earlier.
NNPA improved to 0.38%.
Credit cost declined to only 0.27%.
The slippage ratio improved to 0.57%.
SBI described its current NPA ratios as the lowest in more than two decades.
This changes the old PSU-bank valuation argument
The historical case for a deep SBI valuation discount was partly based on weak asset quality and volatile credit cost.
Those risks have not disappeared.
The current data no longer look like the old SBI.
A 0.27% credit cost and sub-0.4% NNPA are private-bank-like asset-quality numbers.
The remaining discount increasingly reflects lower ROA, lower capital ratios and government ownership rather than immediate bad-loan stress.
How can SBI earn higher ROE with less than half ICICI's ROA?
Because SBI carries less common equity against its asset base.
ICICI CET1 was approximately 16.19%.
SBI CET1 was around 12.89%.
ICICI therefore has significantly more common-equity protection for each rupee of risk-weighted assets.
That reduces financial leverage.
Lower leverage suppresses ROE even when asset profitability is excellent.
SBI extracts comparable shareholder ROE from a less profitable asset base by using more balance-sheet leverage.
Is ICICI's extra capital inefficient?
Not necessarily.
Higher CET1:
- Creates a bigger shock absorber.
- Supports rapid future loan growth.
- Reduces equity-raising risk.
- Allows the bank to absorb ECL transition.
- Supports subsidiary and strategic investment flexibility.
Capital only becomes truly inefficient when management cannot deploy it at returns above the cost of equity.
Is SBI's lower CET1 risky?
It is still comfortably above regulatory requirements.
Total capital adequacy was approximately 15.67%.
CET1 improved significantly year on year.
The important distinction is relative, not absolute.
ICICI has the larger buffer.
SBI currently has sufficient capital while using the balance sheet more aggressively.
Both banks now have valuable non-bank ecosystems
ICICI ecosystem
- ICICI Prudential Life.
- ICICI Lombard.
- ICICI Prudential AMC.
- ICICI Securities.
- ICICI Home Finance.
SBI ecosystem
- SBI Life.
- SBI Mutual Fund.
- SBI Cards.
- SBI General Insurance.
- SBI Capital Markets and other financial-services businesses.
This matters because a modern bank's economic value extends beyond the NIM earned on loans.
ICICI's subsidiaries added meaningful Q1 earnings
ICICI Prudential AMC generated approximately ₹965 crore of PAT.
ICICI Prudential Life generated approximately ₹386 crore.
ICICI Lombard generated around ₹403 crore.
ICICI Securities produced approximately ₹419 crore.
Not all of those profits belong 100% economically to ICICI Bank shareholders because ownership stakes differ.
The figures still demonstrate the breadth of the financial-services ecosystem.
Why are ICICI Bank and SBI valued so differently?
Late-August market data places ICICI around 18x trailing earnings and SBI around 12-13x.
ICICI trades around 3x book.
SBI trades around 1.6x.
The market is effectively saying:
"ICICI's 2.49% ROA deserves a large premium to SBI's 1.11% ROA."
That is economically reasonable.
The harder question is whether the premium is too large given SBI's dramatically improved credit quality.
The market-cap comparison is even more revealing
Bull Run's August 25 snapshot put ICICI Bank around ₹10.16 lakh crore of market value and SBI around ₹9.51 lakh crore.
The market therefore valued the two institutions surprisingly close together.
Yet SBI has:
- More than three times ICICI's deposits.
- More than three times ICICI's loans.
- A much larger branch network.
- Higher absolute quarterly profit.
Why?
Because investors value earning power, not kilograms of balance sheet.
₹1 of SBI assets is worth less to the market because it earns less
ICICI's superior NIM and ROA allow a smaller balance sheet to generate disproportionately large shareholder value.
This is one of the most useful lessons in bank investing.
A bank with ₹50 lakh crore of loans is not automatically more valuable than a bank with ₹16 lakh crore.
The spread, risk and capital needed to support those loans determine the economics.
SBI's valuation closes the gap if ROA moves even modestly higher
At SBI's scale, a 10-basis-point increase in sustainable ROA creates enormous incremental profit.
The bank does not need to reach ICICI's 2.5% ROA to change the valuation narrative.
A sustained move from roughly 1.1% toward 1.2%-1.3%, combined with mid-teens loan growth and low credit cost, could materially increase earnings.
This is SBI's operating-leverage case.
ICICI's valuation requires it to remain exceptional
A premium valuation is easier to lose than a discount valuation.
ICICI must continue delivering:
- ROA near or above 2%.
- NIM above 4%.
- Strong fee growth.
- Low credit cost.
- High-teens loan growth.
- Controlled funding costs.
If those metrics deteriorate, a 3x book multiple provides less downside protection.
The main near-term risk for both banks is the same: loans are outrunning deposits
The gap is considerably wider at SBI.
ICICI begins from a higher NIM.
SBI begins from a larger CASA franchise.
How each bank manages liability growth may determine the next phase of profitability more than headline credit demand.
The second common risk is that today's credit cycle may be unusually benign
Both banks currently report very low bad-loan ratios and credit costs.
That creates excellent current profitability.
It also means future improvement becomes harder.
Credit costs cannot fall below zero indefinitely.
As loan books grow near 20%, future underwriting quality becomes more important than today's NPA stock.
What should investors track next?
ICICI checkpoints
- NIM stays above 4%.
- Deposit growth catches loan growth.
- ROA remains around 2%+.
- Fee income keeps compounding.
- Net slippages stay controlled.
- Capital remains comfortably above requirements.
SBI checkpoints
- Deposit growth reaccelerates.
- Domestic NIM stays around 3%.
- ROA continues rising.
- Credit cost remains below historical levels.
- Corporate growth remains disciplined.
- FCNR funding improves liability economics rather than masking deposit weakness.
ICICI Bank vs SBI: current conclusion
ICICI Bank currently operates the more profitable balance sheet.
Its 4.36% NIM, 2.49% ROA, 16.19% CET1 and 23.5% fee-income growth form one of the strongest large-bank operating combinations in India.
SBI currently offers more scale and more valuation leverage.
It generated ₹21,121 crore of quarterly profit, grew advances 18.6%, reduced GNPA to 1.47%, achieved only 0.27% credit cost and still trades at a large valuation discount to ICICI.
ICICI Bank vs SBI FAQs
Which bank has more deposits?
SBI, with approximately ₹60.06 lakh crore versus ICICI Bank at ₹18.34 lakh crore.
Which bank has more loans?
SBI, with gross advances around ₹50.47 lakh crore versus ICICI Bank's total loan portfolio around ₹16.31 lakh crore.
Which is growing loans faster?
ICICI narrowly in Q1 FY2027, at 19.6% year-on-year versus SBI at 18.63%.
Which has the higher NIM?
ICICI Bank at 4.36%, compared with SBI at 3.00% domestically and 2.86% whole-bank.
Which has higher ROA?
ICICI Bank, approximately 2.49% versus SBI at 1.11%.
Which has higher ROE?
SBI slightly, approximately 17.87% versus ICICI around 17.1%.
Why can SBI have higher ROE despite much lower ROA?
SBI uses more financial leverage and carries a lower common-equity ratio relative to its asset base. ICICI has a substantially higher CET1 cushion.
Which has better asset quality?
ICICI is marginally better on current GNPA and NNPA, but both are exceptionally strong by historical standards.
Which stock is cheaper?
SBI, at roughly 12-13x trailing earnings and around 1.6x book versus ICICI around 18x earnings and roughly 3x book in late August 2026.
Where can investors compare them on Bull Run?
Use the ICICI Bank stock page and State Bank of India stock page.
Research sources
Disclaimer
This article is educational and informational only. ICICI Bank and SBI disclose some ratios on different bases, including average versus period-end CASA and domestic versus whole-bank NIM. Those definitions are stated wherever material. Bank ROA and ROE are affected by capital structure, so higher ROE does not automatically imply better asset productivity. Current credit costs and NPA ratios are unusually benign relative to historical banking cycles and should not be assumed permanent. Market valuation figures are point-in-time late-August 2026 observations and can change daily. Nothing here recommends buying, selling or holding ICICI Bank, State Bank of India or any security. Bull Run is not a SEBI-registered Research Analyst or Investment Adviser.