India's second-largest lender ICICI Bank on Friday beat market expectations with a 30% year-on-year rise in standalone profit at Rs. 1,956 crore for the July-September quarter - its highest ever for a quarter - against Rs. 1,503 crore a year ago, driven by a healthy growth in loans.

"Credit growth has been 18% on a year-on-year basis for this quarter, which is quite diversified," said Chanda Kochhar, managing director and CEO, ICICI Bank.

The bank's advances increased by 18% at Rs. 275,076 crore compared to Rs. 233,952 crore a year ago.

Net interest income (the difference between interest earned and interest paid) of the bank grew by 35% at Rs. 3371 crore, while non-interest income grew by 17% at Rs. 2,043 crore.

Net interest margin (NIM), a measure of a bank's profitability, improved to 3% for the quarter ended September from 2.6% for the same quarter last year.

"Our target is to at least maintain the margin at 3% in fact we would look to improving margins," said Kochhar.

Rise in bad loans forced the bank to make higher provisioning at Rs. 508 crore compared to Rs. 319 crore a year ago.

"The bank has delivered another good set of numbers, both on the operating level as well as on asset quality," said Vaibhav Agrawal, vice-president, research, Angel Broking.