Cholamandalam launches three new biz verticals for consumer and SME loans

Firm partners with leading Fintech companies BankBazaar, Kreditbee and Paytail

In order to drive the next phase of its growth, Murugappa Group’s Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Company  (Chola) has launched three new business divisions for consumer and small and medium enterprises segment -- Consumer and Small Enterprise Loan (CSEL), Secured Business & Personal Loan (SBPL) and SME Loan (SME).

CIFC has also partnered with leading Fintech companies – BankBazaar, Kreditbee and Paytail. “We are confident that these initiatives and partnerships will go a long way in helping us towards making our products and services easily available to our potential customers. The company is also in advanced discussions with many more Fintechs and digital ecosystem partners for sourcing of personal loans, professional loans, Micro & Small business loans and BNPL. The company is expecting to go live with these partnerships over the next three to four months," said Vellayan Subbiah, Chairman, Chola.

The broader plan is to leverage the company's over 40 years of lending experience and over1100 branch network to grow each segment rapidly over the next few years. "We believe that these partnerships will help us in large scale customer acquisition and drive our next wave of growth,” Subbiah added. Chola will focus on areas like personal & professional loans (PPL) and micro and small enterprise loans.

“At BankBazaar, our aim has always been to leverage technology to digitize the customer journey at every step and make the entire customer experience seamless. In keeping with this vision, we are happy to partner with one of India’s largest NBFCs, Chola Finance, to enable customers to access personal loans through a 100 per cent digital journey,” said Adhil Shetty, CEO of BankBazaar.com.

“As we scale up in pursuit of our vision to make personal finance easy & accessible to the youth of India, we look to co-operate with like-minded partners. I'm happy to ascertain that our engagement with Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Company has been one of our key initiatives, and we look forward to continuing expanding on the same as we move along,” said Madhusudan Ekambaram, CEO of Kreditbee.

According to CIFC, PPL is one of the fastest-growing segments in India with over Rs 3,50,000 crore originations. "Despite this kind of growth, there are a lot of individuals who do not have access to credit in India. Given this backdrop, Chola is entering into the Personal Loan segment to provide these loans to salaried and self-employed professionals. The product range would include Term Loans, Flexi-loans etc. Chola will leverage advanced analytics-based underwriting using bureau and alternate data to underwrite these customers," it said.