Muthoot Finance has received approval from the RBI to open 150 new branches across the country.

After a gap of nearly three years, the company will be opening new branches to deepen the reach to the under-banked and underserved customers across India . The RBI’s nod will give a fillip to growth momentum and it will help the company to expand further its customer base and assist them with the services offered, a statement said.

Hiring plans

With the challenges posed by the pandemic, there was a reported spike in credit off-take. Given the barriers faced by the under-banked to avail credit easily, NBFCs and gold loan financers have emerged as a credible option to meet their capital requirements. The company plans to carry out branch expansion across the country in aiding creating employment opportunities. The company is planning to train and hire 600 more to support expansion, the statement added.

George Alexander Muthoot, MD, Muthoot Finance, said “the RBI’s nod for branch expansion is a positive development and it also reinforces regulatory confidence in the gold loan NBFCs. As the economy gradually recovers, the gold loan demand remains steady and the RBI’s nod for branch expansion reinforces our optimism about a growth of 12-15 per cent in gold loan for FY23.”

Branch expansion

“The 150 new branches will add to the existing network of 4,617 and we plan to operationalise it by next two months. With this, we aim to deepen our penetration, especially towards the underserved segment of the society, support our customers and also create employment opportunities”, he added.

Muthoot Finance had also recently expanded its doorstep service of gold loan@home across South India to make credit more accessible and easy to avail. The company saw a consolidated assets under management growth of 11 per cent to ₹64,494 crore and a profit of ₹4,031 crore for FY22.