The Headline Number Wasn't Wrong. It Also Wasn't the Whole Story.
The FY2023 post on this blog flagged a loan-to-deposit ratio» of 316.89% as evidence that shareholder capital, not customer deposits, was funding Superbank's loan growth. Superbank's own Q1 2024 press release (dated April 30, 2024) leads with a different framing: third-party deposits "increased by 28% in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the first quarter of 2023," reaching Rp603 billion. Read against the year-ago quarter, that's true. Read against the quarter Superbank had just reported three months earlier, deposits actually fell - from Rp921,706 million at December 31, 2023 to Rp603,407 million at March 31, 2024, a 34.5% quarter-on-quarter decline - while gross loans kept growing, up 6.4% over the same three months to Rp3,108,351 million.
The arithmetic consequence is exactly what the FY2023 post warned about: the loan-to-deposit ratio didn't ease as the bank matured, it got dramatically worse, jumping from 316.89% at December 2023 to 515.13% at March 2024. A year-on-year percentage is a real number and not a fabricated one - deposits genuinely were higher than a year earlier - but it's also the one comparison that hides a swing this large happening inside a single quarter.
The Prescription
Superbank's underlying credit-distribution story is still intact: gross loans reached Rp3.1 trillion, up 222% from a year earlier per the bank's own release, "supported by increased loan collaboration with financing company partners through ecosystems and digital platforms" - a continuation of the Executing/Channeling model detailed in the FY2023 post. The move that compounds from here is treating deposit stability as seriously as loan growth - a bank that can grow its book 6% in a quarter but let its funding base shrink 34.5% in the same quarter has a balance-sheet-management problem, not just a marketing framing problem.
What it should stop doing: publishing a deposit-growth headline (YoY) without disclosing the sequential move in the same release. This isn't a fabricated number - the 28% YoY figure is accurate - but a reader relying only on Superbank's own communications this quarter would have no way to know deposits had just fallen more than a third from the prior quarter-end. A number that's technically true and still leaves out the more relevant comparison is a framing choice, and framing choices are exactly what this kind of analysis exists to catch.
Key Financial Metrics
Q1 2024 vs. Q1 2023 (P&L, three months ended March 31), and Mar 2024 vs. Dec 2023 (balance sheet, quarter-on-quarter) - bank-only ("Individual")
FX: IDR 15,877 = USD 1 (March 29, 2024 close, applied throughout for consistency).
| Metric | Q1 2024 (IDR) | Q1 2024 (USD) | Q1 2023 (IDR) | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Net Interest Income | Rp111,937M | ~$7.05M | Rp65,429M | ✅ +71.1% |
| Non-interest operating income (expense), net | Rp(212,697)M | ~-$13.4M | Rp(99,992)M | ⚠️ cost widened 112.7% |
| Operating Loss | Rp(100,760)M | ~-$6.35M | Rp(34,563)M | ⚠️ loss widened 191.5% |
| Net Loss | Rp(105,061)M | ~-$6.62M | Rp(34,563)M | ⚠️ loss widened 204.0% |
| Balance sheet metric | Mar 2024 (IDR) | Mar 2024 (USD) | Dec 2023 (IDR) | QoQ Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Assets | Rp6,240,533M | ~$393.1M | Rp5,556,074M | ✅ +12.3% |
| Loans (Kredit yang diberikan, gross) | Rp3,108,351M | ~$195.8M | Rp2,920,823M | ✅ +6.4% |
| Total Deposits (Giro + Tabungan + Deposito) | Rp603,407M | ~$38.0M | Rp921,706M | ⚠️ -34.5% |
| Total Liabilities | Rp1,089,277M | ~$68.6M | Rp1,187,736M | ➖ -8.3% |
| Total Equity | Rp5,151,256M | ~$324.5M | Rp4,368,338M | ✅ +17.9% |
Superbank's quarterly filing compares Q1 2024's P&L to Q1 2023 (year-on-year) but its balance sheet to December 2023 (quarter-on-quarter, per Indonesian OJK convention of comparing to the prior fiscal year-end) - both bases are used above as disclosed, with the quarter-on-quarter deposit move called out explicitly since it's the finding this post is built around. Net Interest Income stands in for "Net Revenue"; Adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow don't apply to a bank and are omitted. This is the bare OJK quarterly-publication format - unaudited, per the filing's own notes, and with no cash flow statement or footnotes attached, so no new footnote-level findings are available this quarter beyond what the FY2023 annual report already surfaced.
Loans grew 6% and deposits fell 35% in the same three months - a funding-gap widening, not a funding-gap improving, and the opposite of what a maturing digital bank's balance sheet should show.
Key Operational Metrics
Funding & Liquidity
- Loan-to-deposit ratio (LDR»): 515.13% (Mar 2024), up sharply from 204.37% (Mar 2023) year-on-year, and from 316.89% (Dec 2023) quarter-on-quarter - see Beyond the Usual below.
Credit Quality
- NPL» ratio - gross: 4.76% (Mar 2024), up from 3.97% (Mar 2023) and from 3.80% (Dec 2023) - credit quality is deteriorating both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter as the loan book scales.
- NPL ratio - net: 0.57% (Mar 2024), more than double 0.26% (Mar 2023).
- CAR» / KPMM: 178.40% (Mar 2024), down from 273.64% (Mar 2023) and from 185.63% (Dec 2023) - still an enormous buffer, but continuing the erosion flagged in the FY2023 post as risk-weighted assets keep growing faster than capital.
Profitability & Efficiency
- NIM»: 7.87% (Q1 2024), up from 7.06% (Q1 2023) - the margin itself keeps improving even as the bottom line doesn't.
- ROA: -7.16% (Mar 2024), down from -3.44% (Mar 2023).
- ROE: -9.04% (Mar 2024), down from -4.07% (Mar 2023).
- BOPO»: 181.86% (Mar 2024), up from 146.11% (Mar 2023).
- Cost-to-Income Ratio» (CIR): 158.19% (Mar 2024), up from 138.59% (Mar 2023).
Not available in this filing: any footnote-level detail (bare quarterly publication, unaudited per the filing's own disclosure notes), a segment or loan-type breakdown at the granularity the FY2023 annual report provided, and transacting-user or merchant counts.
Beyond the Usual
Deposits fell 34.5% in the same quarter the bank's own release highlighted 28% year-on-year growth
Third-party deposits fell from Rp921,706 million at December 31, 2023 to Rp603,407 million at March 31, 2024 - a 34.5% quarter-on-quarter decline - even as Superbank's April 30, 2024 press release stated deposits "increased by 28% in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the first quarter of 2023." Both numbers are accurate on their own terms; the year-ago comparison simply doesn't disclose that the bank's own funding base just contracted by more than a third in the most recent quarter available. The loan-to-deposit ratio makes the scale of the move unambiguous: 316.89% at December 2023 to 515.13% at March 2024, in a single quarter, while the loan book kept growing (+6.4% quarter-on-quarter) against that shrinking funding base. A reader relying only on the press release's own framing would have no way to know this happened.
Credit quality is deteriorating on both a year-on-year and a quarter-on-quarter basis
Gross NPL» rose from 3.97% (Mar 2023) to 4.76% (Mar 2024) year-on-year, and from 3.80% (Dec 2023) to 4.76% (Mar 2024) quarter-on-quarter - deterioration in both directions at once, not just a base-effect artifact of comparing against an unusually clean prior period. Net NPL more than doubled year-on-year (0.26% to 0.57%). This is consistent with a loan book that grew 222% year-on-year (per the bank's own release) faster than the underwriting infrastructure behind it has been stress-tested, and it's the metric most worth watching in the next quarter's filing to see whether it's a temporary seasoning effect of rapid growth or the start of a genuine trend.
The capital injection flagged as a subsequent event in the FY2023 post has landed on the balance sheet
Modal disetor tambahan (additional paid-in capital pending formal share issuance, "Dana setoran modal") shows Rp1,000,965 million at March 2024, up from zero at December 2023 - the balance-sheet confirmation of the FY2023 post's subsequent-events finding that A5-DB Holdings and Singtel Alpha Investment prepaid a combined Rp1,086 billion toward a planned capital increase in February 2024. Total equity rose 17.9% quarter-on-quarter as a direct result, even as total liabilities fell 8.3% over the same period (driven by the deposit decline above) - a balance sheet where shareholder capital, not customer funding, is doing essentially all of the growing.
Target Valuation Range
No numeric valuation range is computable for Superbank - there is no independently traded equity or debt for this entity to value.
Superbank remains wholly owned by its consortium of shareholders (Emtek, Grab, Singtel, KakaoBank, and smaller holders), with no public listing of any kind. As in the FY2023 post, Grab (Nasdaq: GRAB) and Singtel (SGX-listed) both trade publicly, but neither price reflects this one banking subsidiary's standalone economics, so no peer-multiple or DCF exercise is attempted here.
A 28% year-on-year deposit-growth headline and a 34.5% quarter-on-quarter deposit decline are both true at the same time - which is exactly why a single comparison window, chosen by the company doing the reporting, is never enough to actually understand what a quarter's numbers mean.
PT Super Bank Indonesia's quarterly published financial statement ("Laporan Posisi Keuangan Triwulanan"), bank-only/individual basis, unaudited, for the three-month period ended March 31, 2024, signed by the bank's board of directors in Jakarta on April 25, 2024, per Indonesian Financial Services Authority (OJK) bank transparency and publication regulations (POJK No. 37/POJK.03/2019); and the bank's own press release dated April 30, 2024.