AU Small Finance Bank, which will enter the capital market with an initial public offering on June 28, plans to enter into the housing finance segment, its Managing Director and CEO Sanjay Agarwal said.
“We plan to get into housing finance in the first quarter of 2018-19. This will be done under the small finance bank platform itself,” Agarwal said here on Thursday.
AU Small Finance Bank went live as a small finance bank in April this year. Prior to this, it was a non-banking finance company.
Agarwal said that AU Small Finance Bank was yet to decide on whether it would cater to all categories of housing finance or only focus on affordable housing, which is the fastest growing in recent years.
AU continues to see tremendous potential in housing finance business, he added.
This will not be the first time that AU will look at housing finance. In its earlier avatar as an NBFC, it had a subsidiary that was focussed only on housing finance.
However, AU, as an NBFC last year, sold substantial interest in its housing finance arm, according to Agarwal.