Muthoot to focus on money transfer biz

Despite the global economic slowdown, inward remittances by people working overseas have been growing between 10 and 13 per cent, partly helped by the revised cap in July on the number of money transfers to 30 transactions from the earlier 12 in a year.

“This provides an ideal timing for our ongoing drive to double the money payouts or transactions during this year from 2 million transfers that we handled last year,” Jose Allesh, head, money transfer division of Muthoot Group, said here on Wednesday.

The company is planning to leverage its network of 4,000 gold loan branches to step up the money transaction business, as this also helps secures a long-term customer base for other products that it sells, including NCDs, insurance and gold coins, according to Allesh.

Family-bound inward remittances last year stood at about 23 million involving a transfer of Rs 65,000 crore into the country. Of this, he said Muthoot handled 2 million end-point transactions involving Rs 3,500 crore.

International money transfer agencies have a number of sub-agents, who operate through about 100,000 branches across the country. Muthoot claims it currently handles 10 per cent of these inward remittances. The sub-agents get Rs 90-100 per transaction from these agencies, which charge Rs 250-300 per transaction value of up to Rs 50,000, he said.

According to R Ventakeswaran, zonal manager of Muthoot Fiance Limited, apart from the RBI’s move to allow more number of inward remittances per person, Indian immigrants, who are mostly engaged in blue collar jobs, have been finding newer overseas job markets such as Malaysia resulting in increased remittances into the country.

Most of the students who go for studies abroad start sending money back to their families within six months, he said.