Edelweiss to hire up to 40,000 in 3-5 yrs

Financial services major Edelweiss Group is planning to hire 30,000-40,000 people in the next three to five years as it plans to expand its presence in businesses like insurance, mutual fund, housing loan and other retail-focused markets.

"We are planning to increase our headcount by 30,000-40,000 people in the next three-five years," Edelweiss Group Chairman Rashesh Shah told PTI.

The company, which currently has about 2,500 employees, will hire most of the people for the insurance and other retail-focused financial services businesses, Shah added.

Edelweiss, which has so far focused mainly on the wholesale side in all its businesses-brokerage, NBFC, asset management, is now re-orienting itself and would start focusing on the retail side of the businesses.

The wholesale businesses could still see hiring in the range of a 100-150 employees, Shah said.

The group is present in businesses like investment banking, institutional equity brokerage, asset management, private client brokerage, investor advisory services as also retail and wholesale financing.

As part of the expansion in the retail sector, "We had acquired Anagram Stock Broking recently, which has a very strong retail customer franchise and branch sub-broker network across the country. We now plan to aggressively push this business," Shah added.

In the insurance sector, Edelweiss Tokyo Life Insurance Company has recently received the first-stage clearance from the insurance regulator IRDA and is hopeful of getting the other approvals over the next few months. Edelweiss has joint-venture with Japan's Tokyo Marine for the life insurance business.

Shah said,"2011, will see the launch of another retail focused business-Life insurance business."

Last month, Edelweiss Group had started retail housing finance business through its arm  Edelweiss Housing Finance Ltd which started operations in September 2010, in order to cash in on its existing customer base.

The company is looking to capture about 2% of the housing finance market over the next five years.

The current housing finance market size is about Rs 1.5 trillion and Edelweiss Group expects it to double by the end of FY15.