BAFL ties up with Polaris for lending software

Retail consumer finance company Bajaj Auto Finance Ltd (BAFL) has tied up with Polaris Software Ltd for installing the latter's lending software 'Intellect' across its branches and offices.

A project - named Kshitij - to install this software was launched at BAFL's Pune office last week. This project is part of a number of initiatives BAFL is undertaking to revamp its IT infrastructure, which will help the company support its expansion into wider geographies and enhanced product offerings.

Company sources said the lending software would require an investment of around Rs 20 crore at full implementation level.

Neeraj Bhai, vice-president of information technology at BAFL told Business Standard that the decision to implement a robust and scalable lending software was taken in the wake of the company's plans to enter the tier three and tier four towns in India.

Another important factor was the change in BAFL's lending portfolio, which now contains more of non-Bajaj Auto products and covers consumer durables and other categories.

"While we are in tier one and tier two locations, we generally cater to the salary earners or consumers with regular incomes. With the entry into the rural markets, repayment patterns will change drastically as these will be linked with seasonal earnings or even daily repayments in some cases," Bhai said.

He said the company had been looking for a lending software that would support this complex consumer pattern.

Bhai said the company would also be following the group flagship Bajaj Auto Ltd to foreign shores as the latter is set to go global with an array of products.

BAFL would then need a portfolio tracking software that would be scalable for size and multi-currency operations, he said.

Bhai said Intellect would go live in BAFL's first branch in June 2007 and will be extended to the entire branch network by September 2007.

Bhai said the company was yet to select the branch where the software would be implemented first, but added that it may be a medium size one in Pune or Mumbai.

Sanjiv Bajaj, executive director, Bajaj Auto Ltd said, "BAFL is on the path to becoming a premier retail finance company. This is being achieved through augmenting its team and through a series of initiatives aimed at improving the processes and the service delivery infrastructure including the IT platforms."

While the process improvement will be achieved through total productive maintenance, which is going to be tried for the first time in a financial services organisation, the existing lending application is being replaced by the Intellect product suite from Polaris.

"We expect the implementation to make us a more customer focused organisation. It will enable us to launch new products at a fast pace enabling us to effectively compete with the bigger players," he added.