Nifty Bank P/B at 1.96, its lowest since 2021

Where it closed

Nifty Bank closed at 56,019.80 on Monday, 9 March 2026, at a price-to-book ratio of 1.96. Its P/E was 15.01 and its dividend yield 1.05%.

These are NSE's end-of-day figures. The daily series is on the Nifty Bank valuation page.

The lowest P/B in five years

The comparisons below start on 31 March 2021, when NSE moved its index ratios to consolidated figures. On that day Nifty Bank's P/E dropped from 31.30 to 25.87 while its P/B went from 2.83 to 3.03, so older readings are measured differently. That leaves 1,219 sessions up to 9 March.

• P/B: no session in the period closed lower. Monday's close is the low.
• P/E: 274 sessions closed lower, about the 22nd percentile. The low, 12.56, came on 11 March 2025.
• Dividend yield: only 44 of the 1,177 sessions with a published yield offered more than 1.05%.

The full record goes back to 15 September 2003. Over those 5,556 sessions the median P/B is 2.48, and 835 sessions (15.0%) closed below 1.96. They cluster in 2003 and 2004 (238 sessions), 2008 and 2009 (263, with the all-time low of 0.97 on 9 March 2009), 2013 and 2014 (130), and 2020 (107, with a low of 1.58 on 23 March 2020).

The price did not crash; the book grew

The low P/B is not the result of a collapse in bank prices. Nifty Bank set its record close of 61,550.80 on 18 February 2026, and on 9 March it was 9.0% below that.

A year earlier, on 7 March 2025, the index closed at 48,497.50 at a P/B of 2.14 and a P/E of 12.72.

• The index is up 15.5% over the year.
• Dividing price by P/B, the book value behind the index rose about 26.1%, from roughly 22,660 to 28,580 index points.
• Dividing price by P/E, the earnings behind it fell about 2.1%.

So book value outran the price, and the price outran the earnings. Divide the P/B by the P/E and you get the year's earnings as a share of book: 16.8% a year ago, 13.1% now. Since March 2021 that figure has ranged from 11.5% to 19.4%, with a median of 15.8%.

Much of the book growth arrives in steps at month ends. On 30 January the P/B fell from 2.20 to 2.13 while the index slipped 0.6%. On 27 February it fell from 2.19 to 2.11 while the index lost 1.1%. Add the 9.0% fall in price since the February record, and the ratio has gone from 2.20 to 1.96 in twelve sessions.

Private banks, PSU banks and the wider financials

Medians and counts are since 31 March 2021, out of 1,219 sessions.

Private banks are cheap on book but not on earnings. The Private Bank index sits near its P/B low of 2.01, set on 28 August 2025, yet its P/E is above its median. The earnings behind it fell about 15.2% over the year while its book rose about 15.5%.

PSU banks are the opposite. Their P/B is higher than on 87% of sessions since 2021. The Nifty PSU Bank index is up 48.7% over the year, and it set the highest close in our record, which begins in February 2012, of 9,879.85 on 26 February 2026. It closed 10.7% below that on 9 March. Its yield, 2.18%, is still more than twice Nifty Bank's.

The wider market is low on book too. The Nifty 50's P/B of 3.27 on 9 March was above only one session since March 2021, as the Nifty 50 P/E post sets out alongside its P/E.

What this does not tell you

A low P/B can reflect a lower return on that book. Earnings as a share of book fell from 16.8% to 13.1% over the year. An index whose book earns less can deserve a lower multiple of it.

Book value is only as good as the loans behind it. If bad loans are understated, book is overstated.

Some of the change is the index itself. NSE reweights the index and occasionally changes its members, and the published ratios cannot separate that from balance-sheet growth.

Low is not a floor. In 2008 and 2009 the P/B went below 1.96 and kept falling, to 0.97.

It describes the index, not a fund. A banking fund holds its own mix of banks, lenders and insurers.

Where to go from here

The Private Bank and PSU Bank pages carry the same daily series. The guide to banking and financial services funds explains how funds in this space are built, and how to read an index P/E ratio covers what the ratios measure.