After delivering a decent performance in FY19 amid a turbulent liquidity scenario, Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Company (CIFCL), the Murugappa Group’s non-banking finance company (NBFC), is embarking on a slew of new initiatives across its three businesses to tap future opportunities.

In FY19, the company had crossed a significant milestone of ₹50,000-crore in assets under management (AUM) and a branch footprint of 900-plus across the country. Its employee headcount is more than 7,000 and it also has about 16,000 people who assist in various business activities, with the majority being in smaller towns.

“In addition to delivering strong financial results, we have set for ourselves a path of growth by preparing for the future,” Arun Alagappan, Executive Director, said in the company’s latest annual report.

The company has drawn a well-defined roadmap to bring digitisation to all its processes. With the theme ‘Phygital’, it seeks to augment physical presence with digital leadership.

For the vehicle finance (VF) business, which already has nine different segments and a large footprint across manufacturers and models, Cholamandalam has embarked on strengthening the sustainability of the market share and improving the process and customer experience with four different initiatives pertaining to sales, credit and operation, vehicle finance portal and business adjacencies.

“These initiatives will help us address the market segments better as well as diversify our market and portfolio risk across the assets and liabilities sides,” he said.

For the home equity business, similar initiatives in the entire customer life cycle are being planned along with digitisation of processes, he added.

The home loans business will consolidate its growth by ensuring the location-level penetration and portfolio management. Also, the company will be strengthening its analytics function and setting up a digital HR system, and on the capital management side, it has several initiatives to diversify its funding base to reduce dependence on a few sources. Home loans are currently being offered through 132 branches across nine States. The company plans to expand to 200 branches in this fiscal.

“CIFCL’s unencumbered cash and liquid investments were about ₹4,024 crore as of March 2019. This, along with monthly loan collections (principal) of ₹1,350-₹1,450 crore in April-September 2019 would be sufficient to meet the average monthly repayment of ₹1,550-₹1,650 crore in the same period.

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