Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Q3 FY 2024 earnings conference call of Aditya Birla Capital Limited. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on your touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Vishakha Mulye, CEO, Aditya Birla Capital. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the earnings call of Aditya Birla Capital for Q3 FY 2024. Joining me today are my senior members of my team, Bala, Rakesh, Tushar, Pankaj, Kamlesh, Venky, Vijay, Ramesh, Sanchita and Amit. I will cover our strategy and approach across businesses, and I will request Vijay to take us through the financial highlights, followed by discussion on the performance of our key businesses by our CEOs. Against the global economic backdrop, the momentum in the Indian economy continues very strong. The real GDP growth rate of 7.6% in Q2 2024 exceeded all forecasts. GST collections continue to remain robust at more than INR 1.7 lakh crore in January. We expect positive macroeconomic trends to continue and Indian economy to perform well in FY 2024 and FY 2025.
At Aditya Birla Capital, we follow "One ABC, One P&L" approach to focus on quality and profitable growth by leveraging data, digital, and technology. The three pillars of our approach that we have discussed is One Customer, One Experience, and One Team. This approach has helped us to grow and build our scale across businesses. Our total lending portfolio across NBFC and HFC businesses grew by 34% year-on-year and 6% sequentially and crossed INR 1.15 lakh crore. The total consolidated revenue grew by 29% year-on-year to INR 9,997 crore in Q3 FY 2024. I'm also happy to share that our consolidated profit after tax grew by 39% year-on-year and 4% sequentially to INR 736 crore. Digital First is at the core of our strategy for product innovation, direct acquisition, and seamless transaction experience.
In our AMC business, about 80% of our customers were onboarded digitally. In life business, 80% of our renewals were done digitally. In our health insurance business, 85% of our business is delivered by auto underwriting. Our comprehensive B2B platform for MSME ecosystem, Udyog Plus, continues to has seen a very robust response from Udyog Plus, with more than INR 4 lakh registration as of December end. We continue to integrate Udyog Plus with ABG ecosystem to provide channel financing to our dealers. Udyog Plus has clocked disbursement of around INR 180 crore till date, with ABG ecosystem contributed to more than 60% of the business. The total portfolio of Udyog Plus reached 100 crore rupees as of December end. We will continue to scale up our business in ABG ecosystem as we expand our market footprint in B2B segment.
In June last year, we had launched Payment Lounge. This is an omni-channel collections platform for merchants with customization and smart routing capabilities for higher success rate and effective reconciliation. It can be integrated with e-commerce platforms and digital platforms of merchants, enabling to make the collection seamlessly. Payment Lounge, I'm happy to say, has reached a run rate of monthly run rate of INR 500 crore. We follow a "One Customer" approach, through which we build deep understanding of our customer profiles, provide them simplified and holistic financial solutions. We had mentioned in our previous earnings call that mobile app of D2C platform was expected to go live in the next 90 days. We are happy to share that we will be launching the app in the closed user group, and it will go live in the next one month.
Through this app, we will acquire new customers and provide holistic and simplified solutions to our customers to suit their financial needs. As we continue to strengthen our digital offerings, we are also focused on expanding our physical footprint. Our branch expansion has targeted tier 4, tier 3 and tier 4 city towns. Our overall branch count has increased by 59 in Q3 FY 2024, and we now have 1,462 branches across all our businesses as of December end. In line with our core ABC approach, we continue to expand our co-located branches, which increased by 69 during the quarter to 762 branches across 218 locations as of December end. While we are growing our businesses, we follow prudent risk management practices with a strong emphasis on return on capital.
We had mentioned in our previous quarter earnings call that we are tightening the underwriting in the smaller ticket size, personal and consumer loans for our NBFC business by calibrating our credit filters and scorecard. I'm happy to report that in line with this, the sequential growth in our personal and consumer loan portfolio has reduced from 22% in Q4 FY 2023, to 15% in Q1 2024, to 9% in Q2 2024, to 1% in Q3 2024. Within the personal and consumer loan portfolio, we brought down our consumer loan portfolio, which comprises of BNPL and check out sourced through partners from about INR 4,100 crore at the end of September, to INR 2,700 crore at the end of December.
While the personal and consumer loan portfolio has stayed flat sequentially, unsecured and secured business loans and corporate loans continue to grow well. The total NBFC portfolio has grown by 35% year-on-year and 5% sequentially. About 60% or 68% of our portfolio is secured at the end of December. Going forward, we will leverage the newly launched comprehensive platform of Udyog Plus, the extended ABG and ABC ecosystem, and our Pan-India branch network. We will also look to grow the corporate and mid-market portfolios based on the opportunity. We remain confident of doubling our NBFC portfolio in the next three years. Now, coming to asset quality. I would like to highlight that asset quality trends in NBFC portfolio continue to improve.
The gross Stage 2 and Stage 3 loans have declined by 39 basis points sequentially to 4.85% as on December end. Our total credit loss in NBFC portfolio was 1.5% in Q3 FY 2024. We expect the credit loss to remain at a similar level as we go forward. I now request Vijay to briefly cover the financial performance of our key subsidiaries for the quarter. Over to you, Vijay.
Thank you, Vishakha. Coming to the financial performance, consolidated profit after tax grew by 39% year-on-year and 4% sequentially to INR 736 crore. The total revenue grew by 29% year-on-year to INR 9,997 crore in quarter three of FY 2024. In our NBFC business, we continued with a strong momentum of disbursement and granularization of our book. Disbursement for the quarter grew by 26% year-on-year to INR 16,548 crore in quarter three of FY 2024. This helped the loan portfolio to grow 35% year-on-year and 5% sequentially to INR 98,603 crore as of December end. The NBFC business had a ROE of 2.41% and ROE of 16.95% in quarter three.
During Q3, we also infused equity capital amounting to INR 850 crore in our NBFC subsidiary to support the growth momentum and maximize our share of opportunities. Our Housing Finance business continues to see healthy momentum, with disbursements increasing by 45% year-on-year and 7% sequentially, crossing INR 2,000 crore during Q3 of FY 2024. The loan portfolio grew by 27% year-on-year and 7% sequentially to INR 16,538 crore as of September end, as of December end. ROA was 2.01, and ROE was 14.6% in Q3 FY 2024. Coming to our AMC business, the average AUM increased by 11% year-on-year to INR 3,11,509 crore, of which equity AUM was approximately 44%.
Our passive AUM also grew at a healthy rate of 36% year-on-year to about INR 29,300 crore at December end. In the Life Insurance business, our individual first year premium grew by 8% year-on-year, and our net VNB margin was at a healthy 15.6% in nine months FY 2024. In our Health Insurance business, our unique differentiated Health First model helped us to deliver a growth of 29% year-on-year in the nine months of FY 2024. The combined ratio stood at 121% in nine months FY 2024. With that, I will now hand over the call to Rakesh, the MD and CEO of our NBFC business, to take us through the NBFC business performance in detail. Over to you, Rakesh.
Thanks, Vijay, and good evening, everyone. In our NBFC business, we saw a 5% quarter-on-quarter and 35% year-on-year growth in our AUM, taking it to INR 98,611 crore in quarter three. Our retail and SME segment AUM grew 39% year-on-year, and now stands at INR 66,637 crore, contributing to 68% of the overall AUM mix. As Vishakha mentioned, we took several proactive interventions in this quarter by tightening our underwriting norms ahead of any real signs of industry concerns emerging in the small ticket consumer loan segment. As a result, this portfolio has de-grown by 34% from INR 4,100 crore last quarter to INR 2,700 crore as of 31st December, and we will continue to dial down this portfolio in quarter four as well.
Our personal loan segment, on the other hand, grew at a healthy 11% quarter-on-quarter. We have got a lot of queries about our exposure to loans sourced through Paytm.... Paytm is one of our channel partners. We have an only channel architecture for distribution, and our underwriting for acquiring customers is identical across all our channels. The consumer loan portfolio sourced via Paytm is less than 1% of the total loan portfolio as of today. As part of our calibrated approach towards consumer loan portfolio, which I had discussed earlier, we have brought down this portfolio from about 2.5% as of end of June to less than 1% as of today.
As I have always said, we observe the performance of customers with us, and based on their performance, we use our underwriting scorecards to create pre-approved offers, which are communicated to the customer. The underwriting is based on our rule engine, and the disbursement happens directly in the customer's account. The collection is done via NACH, which is in our favor. I would also like to emphasize here that all our digital sourcing journeys are designed for end-to-end control, from underwriting to collections, with minimal dependency on channel partners, giving us complete ownership of customers. We continue to focus on growing business loans to MSME customers, and this segment has grown at a healthy rate of 9% quarter-on-quarter and 36% year-on-year, and comprises of 50% of the overall AUM of ABFL.
Large share of this growth has come from the secured products and primarily through our direct sourcing channel. Today, the total secured portfolio of ABFL is at 68.5% of the overall loan growth. New business sourcing was strong in quarter three, and we disbursed INR 16,550 crore, which is 26% higher than last year. Our business loan segment was the biggest contributor in terms of disbursement mix at 45%, growing at 11% quarter-on-quarter and 49% year-on-year. Nearly 50% of the disbursements in overall business loan segment is done directly, and we expect this to continue, and continue to inch upward with scale-up of our B2B platform of MSME with Udyog Plus.
We launched Udyog Plus in the, at the start of this year, and I'm happy to share very encouraging numbers in early days of scale-up. The platform has registered over 400,000 MSMEs as of December 2023, with nearly INR 100 crore of AUM on this platform. Our net interest margin was maintained at 6.9% in quarter three of this year. We, we have passed on 20-25 basis points in our new disbursals across all our product segments to accommodate increase in our cost of funds. Our OpEx to AUM ratio increased by 24 basis points quarter-on-quarter to 2.24%. As I had mentioned in our earnings calls, there was a one-time benefit due to actualization of provisions related to employee expenses in quarter two.
The nine months of this financial year, OpEx to AUM, OpEx to AUM is at a healthy 2.13%, despite our continued investment in branches to scale up direct sourcing in emerging markets. We added 25 branches this quarter and 77 branches in this financial year, taking our branch count to 400 as of December end. Our profits after tax for quarter three was at INR 572 crore, growing at 41% year-on-year. The return on equity for the quarter expanded by 186 basis points year-on-year to 16.96%. The nine months of ROA for this financial year is at 2.48, and ROE is at 17.6%.
We had a capital infusion of INR 850 crore in this quarter, and our capital adequacy ratio increased from 16.27 in quarter two to 16.67 in quarter three, and this is despite the increase in risk weights by RBI in Personal and Consumer Loan segment announced in November last year. Our asset quality has also shown consistent improvement with our Stage 2 plus Stage 3 book reducing by 213 basis points year-on-year and 39 basis points quarter-on-quarter to 4.85%. The Gross Stage 3 book stood at 2.59% in quarter three, compared to 3.62% for the same period last year.
We have also enhanced our Stage 3 provision coverage to 50%, which is higher by 7% over last quarter of last year and 1.7% over the last year of this financial year, last quarter of this financial year. Going forward, we will continue to build a granular portfolio to enhance our retail and SME segment mix with scaling up of Udyog Plus, our B2B platform, and investing in our distribution presence in emerging geographies to further grow. As we build scale, enhance capacity, and invest in technology, we remain committed to delivering sustainable returns for the forthcoming quarters. With this, I will now hand over to Pankaj Gadgil, MD and CEO of the Housing Finance Business.
Thank you, Rakesh, and good evening, everyone. I will discuss HFC's performance in the third quarter of FY 2024. We sustained robust momentum in disbursements and book growth. The consistent improvement in better metrics can be attributed to our strong financial performance and dedicated focus on portfolio quality. Q3 key highlights are as follows:
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Yeah. So Q3 key highlights are as follows: disbursements of INR 2,015 crore, which is an increase of 49% YoY. AUM as of December 2023 is INR 16,538 crore, an increase of 27% YoY, and a customer base now of 60,400. Our PBT for the quarter is, for the first time, INR 100 crore, in the quarter, with an increase of 28% YoY. NHB refinance mix has improved from 17% in December 2022 to 23% in December 2023. Cost of borrowing has sustained at 7.67%. On asset quality, Stage 3 has reduced by 45 basis points QoQ and 148 basis points YoY. The ROA for Q3 FY 2024 is 2.01%, and ROE is at 14.58%.
You can refer to the detailed financials on slide 24 of the presentation. Now, I'd like to provide you with an update on the progress of the four pillars of our strategy. To begin with the first pillar, growth and distribution network. We now operate 130 branches across 19 states, covering 80%-85% of the total addressable market of the housing finance industry. We launched a nationwide channel engagement program, extending our reach to 1,600+ channel partners across 24 cities in this quarter. Now, the contribution of ABG ecosystem to new disbursements has reached 9% for the quarter. These initiatives clearly have led to an increase of 45% disbursements year-on-year.
Talking about the second pillar of digital reinvention of entire customer journey, I am pleased to share that as of December 2023, our newly implemented unified digital lending platform, Finverse, is now operational in all branches. Finverse currently hosts 35+ microservices and 120+ APIs and incorporates AI-driven algorithms for easy credit assessment. In just 5 months of the nationwide launch, the adoption of Finverse has surpassed 90% as of December 2023. Moving to pillar number 3, which is data and analytics. We have made significant progress in the analytics domain, evolving from the formation of our team in June 2023 to having 8 live scorecards and 8 operational data mart as of December 2023. Lastly, on portfolio quality. Our gross Stage 3 has shown significant improvement, decreasing from 3.66% in December 2022 to 2.9% in December 2023.
We are maintaining a Stage 3 PCR of 34%. The details of the same are provided on slide number 22. To further our collection efficiency, we recently launched a comprehensive end-to-end debt management platform in November. In the first phase, customer engagement module has gone live. In the subsequent phases, we plan to automate allocation and settlement modules as well, with the aim of 100% adoption by June 2024. In summary, we continue to demonstrate consistency across all aspects of good growth, digital transformation, asset quality, and core profitability for sixth quarter in a row. Throughout this journey, our commitment to robust profitability and unwavering dedication to customer centricity remains integral to our core operations. With that, now I hand over to Bala, MD & CEO of the Asset Management Company.
Thank you, Pankaj, and good evening to everyone. I'd like to share some highlights of ABSL AMC performance for Q3 FY 2024, as it was presented in the AMC analyst call. ABSL AMC overall average assets under management, including alternate assets, reached INR 3.25 lakh crore, growing by 11% year-on-year. The mutual fund quarterly average AUM stood at INR 3.12 lakh crore, and equity quarterly average AUM was at INR 1.36 lakh crore. SIP flows have increased from INR 942 crore in December 2022 to INR 1,005 crore in December 2023. On the retail side, our efforts have worked well in the contribution of retail fraternity, increasing to 52% of the overall asset management, and contribution coming from these cities have grown to 70% as on December 2023.
Our sales ecosystem, which includes virtual relationship managers, campers for onboarding of distributors, service to sales for improving the overall mind share of the customer, and digital distribution, have been yielding powerful results in building our retail fraternity. On the alternate business side, our passive offerings grew by 36% to around INR 29,300 crore and has a growing customer base of about 6 lakh folios. Our current products are still composed of about 40 products in the passive business. On the AIF front, the fundraising is underway for ABSL India Special Opportunities Fund with the Category III AIF, and also opened the product for subscription. The ABSL Structured Opportunity for the Category III, Category II AIF, both in the pipeline, and the closing will happen like six months. Moving on to financials for the quarter.
Our Q3 FY 2024 revenue was at INR 421 crore, up 16% year-on-year, and profit after tax was at, for the Q3 FY 2024, was at INR 209 crore, up by 26% year-on-year. For nine months ending December 31, 2023, our revenue was over INR 1,201 crore, up by 17% year-on-year, and profit after tax was at INR 572 crore, up by 24% year-on-year. With this, I'll hand over to Kamlesh Rao, the MD & CEO as well as Sun Life Insurance.
Thank you, Bala, and I'll try and spend time on the Life Insurance business, both for the industry as well as at Aditya Birla Sun Life Insurance. Over the last three years, we have built our franchise on consistent growth of greater than 20% in both our individual as well as group Life Insurance business. We have also ensured this growth is value accretive from our net VNB perspective, which expanded from 6.9% levels three years back to a healthy 23% net VNB last year. In the nine months of this financial year, the individual life insurance industry has seen rising ULIP, as seen in the reported numbers of companies, partly led by upside in the equity market and also due to change in taxation on traditional products last year.
At ABSLI, we have been able to keep ULIP business at levels of 21%, which is same as last year, and we must maintain our net VNB margins in line with last year same time. We will continue to focus on this strategy going forward while balancing our growth objectives. During the quarter, we commenced business with our new bank tie-ups at IDFC First Bank and Bank of Maharashtra. We are pleased to share that we have signed up corporate agency partnerships with Axis Bank in December and will commence business in the coming quarter. This will further strengthen our banker proposition to drive growth going forward. Our mindshare and the largest bank partner that we have now has improved in Q3 compared to Q2, and we will continue on to work on expanding the same as we move forward.
We have grown by 8% in Individual Life Insurance business in the 9 months of this year, against growth by private players of 11% and overall industry at 7%. This has come on the back of 17% growth in the number of policies for the same period. Our net VNB margin for 9 months was at 15.6, which is in line with what we achieved same time last year. Last year, we ended on 23% of net VNB margins for the entire year. Our innovation on the product side continues.
In the three months of this year, we have launched two plans: a Salary Term Plan, an industry-first product specific for the salary segment in the area of protection, and Platinum Gain Plan and Fortune Wealth Plan, another industry-first product in ULIP with the feature of trail commissions on AUM basis to distributors. The individual business had a healthy product mix, with traditional business accounting for 77% of our overall business. The fact that 28% of our business came from upselling to existing customers helped productivity growth in both our proprietary as well as partnership channels. In the Group Life Insurance Segment, the private industry saw a growth of 12%, while the overall industry saw a degrowth of 14%, and ABSLI registered a degrowth of 2%.
The degrowth is on account of seasonal nature of the group business, and growth momentum will increase in Q4. The business has grown by 17% in Q3, over Q3 over Q2. We continue to remain the number one in the ULIP AUM in the Group Life Insurance business. Our total premium of INR 11,101 crore has registered a growth of 10% over last year's same period, with a two-year CAGR of 17%, demonstrating our increasing business growth. This growth came from our new business growth as well as renewal premium growing at 20%, and our digital collections now account for 80% of our renewal premium. Persistence across all buckets did well, with the 13th month now at 87% and the 61st month at 62%. We continue to maintain our upward bias in our forward guidance for these persistence numbers.
Our assets under management now stand close to INR 82,043 crore, with a YoY growth of 21%. Twenty-six percent of this AUM is in equity and the balance seventy-four percent in debt. Our investment performance has been better than respective benchmarks across all three categories of equity, debt, or even balanced funds, either from a one-year or a five-year perspective. Our digital adoption across various areas is demonstrated in slide 43. Hundred percent of the new business customers are onboarded digitally. Eighty-three percent of all our services are now available digitally, covering sixty-five percent of our customer transactions, and our customer self-service ratio now stands at ninety-three percent. Our approach going forward is to continue the growth trajectory of this business, backed by both productivity and capacity. We expect continued improvement in the quality of our book.
Growth will come from a diversified mix of both proprietary and partnership channels. We will continue to be best in class in our digital infrastructure across prospecting and onboarding in sales, underwriting, and customer service, as well as claims. With that, I hand over to Amit Jain to speak about the Health Insurance.
Thanks, Kamlesh, and I would like to now share an overview of the performance of our Health Insurance business. In the first nine months of FY 2024, we achieved a gross written premium of INR 89 crore, experiencing a strong 29% YoY growth. The first quarter stood out with an impressive 43% YoY growth, redefining our position as the fastest growing SAHI player during the quarter. Our market share in SAHI rose from 10.4% to 10.7% in the first nine months of FY 2024, driven by a strong growth of 34% in the retail business in Q3. The strong growth in retail business was driven by our larger retail channels, specifically the proprietary channel, which saw a 40% YoY increase. Our proprietary channel share also increased to nearly 30% compared to 26% in nine months of FY 2023.
All our large bank shareholders have experienced good growth, and we also activated the Yes Bank relationship in the last quarter. Our focus on diversifying our product portfolio saw a very successful launch of Activ One. This is the most comprehensive indemnity product in the industry, with seven variants targeting various customer segments. We went on a theme of 100% health, 100% insurance. It further centers our Health First approach with a very strong insurance component, responding to all the customer feedbacks on reasons they don't buy health insurance. It's very strong early success gives us confidence for a very strong Q4.
Emphasizing on a superior product mix, our fixed benefit product portfolio has risen from 13% in the nine months FY 2023 to 18% in the first nine months of this financial year, which promises a positive impact on our profitability in the upcoming quarters. Our group business witnessed 43% YoY growth, driven by a sharp focus on profitability through careful customer segmentation, cross and upsell strategies, and corporate wellness initiatives. We are strategically concentrating on mid-corporate and SME segments to build a sustainable and a profitable corporate and affinity business. Moving to profitability, we balanced our growth and profitability well. Our net loss stood at INR 270 crore compared to INR 217 crore in the same period last year. The higher absolute loss is primarily on account of business seasonality.
Our experience has been that our losses peak out in Q3, which was also the case in FY 2023. We are expecting a profit in Q4, and our overall full year FY 2024 loss will be lower than the last year. Claims and expense ratios at the company level are trending well, and we anticipate the CoR to also exhibit a similar trend in the coming quarter. As a tech-driven, digitally enabled, data-centric Health First business, we are committed to continuous investment in our tech and digital capabilities. Our app downloads have increased by 36% YoY, and MAU have also grown by 30% YoY. Our self-service transactions stand at an all-time high of 82%, compared to 79% in Q2.
Leveraging high-end analytical tools, we make informed decisions that positively impact our customer lives through personalized product offerings, targeted health and wellness interventions, and a personalized service approach, resulting in a better customer experience. Investments in data augmentation and analytics are enhancing cross-sell, retention, and fraud management. Our digital health and wellness ecosystem now features over 60 partners. This is continuously being expanded through collaborations with Insurtech and Healthtech partners. A first of its kind, digital face scan-based health assessment feature was launched in this financial year, and it has been very well received, with over 43,000 assessments completed, contributing to more than 20% of our total health assessments. Our differentiated Health First model is now showing signs of maturity. This is driven by sharp analytics, customer insights, and personalized communication. The improved outcomes for some of the intervene cohorts are now visible.
Customers participating in Activ Dayz exhibit lower loss ratios ranging from 10%-30% or more. Likewise, customers earning Health Returns experience loss ratios up to 50% lower than the baseline. More details are given in slide six. Overall, this has kept our retail loss ratio in control, and our endeavor is now how do we demonstrate this at scale? Looking forward, given the compelling opportunity, our differentiated business model and a supportive regulatory environment, we maintain an optimistic outlook on the growth potential of the health insurance industry. Our vision is to aggressively expand our franchise while upholding best-in-class unit economics and a steadfast focus on profitability. Thank you, and I now hand it over back to Vishakha for closing remarks.
Thank you, Amit. This concludes our comments on our performance this quarter. We'd be very happy to take if there are any questions.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. The first question is from the line of Abhijit Tibrewal from Motilal Oswal. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you, and good evening, everyone. Congratulations to the ABCL team on the good set of results. So quite clearly, you preempted some of our questions in terms of personal and consumer loans and what is the contribution that is coming from Paytm? I just wanted to dwell a little bit on personal and consumer loans. I think in your opening remarks, you shared that Paytm is less than 1% of your sourcing in consumer loans. So is it just incremental sourcing has come down to less than 1%, or even at your portfolio or to book level, Paytm is contributing less than 1% of your consumer loans?
So if you look at, on, on the slide on the segment-wide AUM breakup we have given, that the consumer loan, the BNPL, is now 4% of our overall, consumer loan business. So that's around 700 odd crores, as of end of 31st, December, which has further come down.
Okay, but my question was more around the dependence that we have on Paytm. So I can see, and so what you're trying to suggest is this entire BNPL book was coming from Paytm, and which has kind of continued to decline, like you said, less than 4% versus December levels.
Yeah. So if you look at this was close to around INR 2,200 crore by end of quarter two, which has come down to INR 700 crore. As of today, it's further come down.
Okay. That is, that is one. And then, I mean, this is last, last time around in the last earnings call, you had shared couple of interesting details around what is the average ticket size in your personal and consumer loans. And I think you'd also shared that you are tracking the leverage of your customers, and I think 12%-13% of your customers have showed a significant increase in leverage over the last 9-12 months. So if you could just share if you've done that analysis this time around.
Yeah. So that is an ongoing process. So we track the leverage, and this 11%-12% of the customers has not missed our assumption that leverage was 1.5x . So what we also realized that earlier these consumer loans, let's say, people used to take a INR 50,000 loan or INR 100,000 loan. That was broken down into multiple loans, and that's the trend which we saw in the last 6-9 months. So you will find because it's the end use, which is getting. It's embedded finance, which is getting. So that's the reason you see a INR 15,000 loan and a INR 40,000 loan. But the overall, we have not seen too much of a leverage.
Remains the same, at around 12.7% of the customers have a leverage, which I had mentioned last time, of more than 1.5x than what they had taken when we had given the loan.
Got it. Got it. So, I mean, just to follow up on that, I mean, so fair to assume that given that we have calibrated our underwriting in personal and consumer loans, the kind of deceleration in QoQ growth that as Vishakha was explaining in her opening remarks, we'll continue to see that kind of a deceleration in the near term?
Yes, and I had mentioned it in the Vishakha mentioned in her opening remarks, and I also mentioned that we will dial this down further because of the kind of concern which the regulator had on small ticket consumer loans and consumer credit. So before we could see any trend in our portfolio, we have dialed it down, and you could see that the consumer loan has come down by 34% quarter-on-quarter. And we are looking at further bringing this down.
Got it. Got it. And then maybe one last question. Thank you. And that's useful. Just one last question that I had on the housing side. So if you could just briefly explain how is the demand kind of holding up today in mortgages? I ask this because, I mean, there are a lot of mixed views, particularly in terms of urban affordable segment, which a lot of people ascribe is not doing too well. But if I kind of look at our disbursements, our growth, we continue to do very well. So congratulations to you for that. So if you could just dwell on the demand that you're seeing in mortgages in various customer segments or ticket sizes, whichever way you want to look at it.
Just a related question here, I mean, what's our sourcing mix in the HFC or the housing business?
Yeah. Thank you, Pankaj. I think on the demand side, you know, when we look at the numbers internally, monthly, we also check what is the overall demand, you know, demand that is coming up also on the bureau. The number of hits on the bureau also we keep tracking. We track this every month, and you know, we have seen that those numbers are actually stagnating. They're not moving up that dramatically, but they are also not coming down. So that's the good news, it is there. The other, you know, question that you asked, you know, is all about, you know, what is, what is the next... You know, how are the segmental, you know, shifts that are happening?
First, the good news is that, you know, from market share perspective, I think there is a huge opportunity that, you know, we have as ABHFL compared to the overall market size itself of the housing finance company. Housing finance companies all put together, our estimates are, in the industry is about INR 8,850,000 crore, and we are, you know, currently at a INR 60,500 crore kind of a book. So I think the accelerating is coming definitely at the cost of, you know, some other competition, hopefully, because the demand is not moving that much up. So certainly we are taking up share....
As far as, you know, how the segments are moving for us, the overall affordable segment, and that also I'm talking from a bureau perspective, I think that number is, you know, consistently for the industry is trending between 9-10 lakh, are moving up that significantly. For us, the segmental mix is what, you know, we are also talking, and if you see our slides, which mentions our segmental mix. Broadly today, we are 51% of our overall, you know, mix is coming in from the value segment, and 14% is coming in from the, you know, growth segment. And if you, you know, further drill down in that percentage, all inclusive, 41% is coming in the affordable HL plus LAP, 10% is here. So, that is where, you know, our segmental numbers are coming in.
So we are looking at, and we've spoken about it also, that, you know, we are looking at the opportunities across all these segments, because, we feel that opportunities exist right from the prime to the informal segment, and capitalize them with the right product, you know, market, and right mix. That's where, you know, we are focusing in our principle.
Got it. That's useful, just one last thing. I mean, you have talked about the subsidiary, Aditya Birla Capital Digital, to kind of come out with your own super app, so to say. So, are there any progress there, or are there any timelines that you are working at for the launch of your app, which will, I think, encompass all the product offerings that across the Aditya Birla Capital?
Just to reiterate, I think this entire platform that we are talking is an omnichannel platform, which has, you know, all the four core factors, which is, you know, sourcing from the branches, virtual engagement, app and the refresh as well. The apps, you know, of omnichannel platform, ABCD, like Vishakha mentioned in the opening comments, is right now in CUG, as we speak. What we are also saying, what she also mentioned is that we are going to launch this in the next month. So that is, you know, where we are, you know, on the launch of the app.
Great. This is useful. Thank you very much, and all the very best to you and the team.
Thank you very much. Participants, remember star and one to ask the question. Next question is from the line of Anuj Singla from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good evening, everyone. Thank you very much for the opportunity. So the first question is on the sourcing mix of the personal and consumer loan business. Given the, you know, what has happened at the premium side and, after this rate increase on the other fintech partnerships, can you guide us how the sourcing mix has changed in this business on a QoQ basis?
In terms of sourcing mix, if you look at and we track it in terms of our direct sourcing through the DSAs and through the digital. If you look at, our direct has gone up. Direct is around 45% of the sourcing happens through direct, 22% happens through the DSAs, and 42% through the digital. But if I, this is at the company level, but if I just give you our digital personal and consumer, this is 84% of our personal and consumer is through the digital journey. That's what we do, and five odd percent is direct sourcing, which we have.
How much would be the fintech partners out of this digital journey? Do they form a part of that?
So if you look at, and I mentioned this earlier, our most of our partnership is at the. If you look at the consumer side, the BNPL and consumer loans, which is there, which is almost 14% of our loan book in the personal and consumer, and that's how these partners. And once we onboard these customers, based on their performance on our portfolio over couple of cycles, we see the performance and through our underwriting scorecards, then we offer them a upsell or a cross-sell products. So that's how this entire journey is. So if you want to see in terms of the fintech contribution to this, you will have to see in the consumer side, primarily the contribution which is coming new to ABFL as a customer.
So like we said, you know, as Rakesh said, the most of the digital partnerships and the acquisition is in our consumer side, which is the portfolio that we are actively trying to reduce and which has come down from INR 4,200 to around INR 2,600 now. And as Rakesh said, that we will continue to reduce that. So if your question is that whatever is happening, you know, will that have an impact on our growth in the future? The answer is no, because we are actively reducing, one. Second, we believe there are alternative channels that we have already built. We spoke about, you know, we have increased our branch network. Arogya Plus has, you know, has been launched, which is gaining traction.
Pankaj spoke about our D2C, you know, app, which we are launching, you know, next month. We've already released it, in the closed user group. So all these channels and our direct channels is also kicking in. So we don't see, you know, any impact on our growth in the future. And I did cover in my opening remarks that we still have a visibility as we had given you a guidance in the past, that our NBFC book, we believe that we will be able to double in the next, three years.
Okay.
And if I can just add, if you see, we put a lot of focus on our secured business, and our,
Right.
Unsecured SME business has grown quite strongly at 9% quarter-on-quarter and 36% year-on-year.
... So a lot of focus. So it's not about, yes, we are dialing down one segment, but we are growing the other segment and all the enablers which Vishakha mentioned, which will help us in terms of delivering that growth.
Got it, Rakesh. Now, this is very commendable, actually. There is no impact on disbursement despite the restrictions coming. But I think another thing there is, so the fintech partners have talked about moving from small ticket size personal loans to big ticket size. Are we also partnering with them in this initiative? And, is there a meaningful portion of that in our sourcing for PL, which is now 86% of the business? Just to get some thoughts there in the personal and consumer loan segment again.
Please stay connected. The line for the management role. Participants, please stay connected while we rejoin the management back to the call. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience. We have the line for the management reconnected.
Yeah.
Yeah. Rakesh, should I repeat the question?
I heard your question, and I was answering. I don't know where you lost me, but let me just start. I was saying that we have... we look at multiple channels in terms of sourcing, and that's our strategy. We are only channel as a platform. We look at all ecosystem partners and all. At this point in time, we are not looking at any fintech for large ticket sourcing, because large ticket sourcing needs touch and feel and visiting the shop floor, assessing the cash flows, looking at the security and then giving the loan. So at this point in time, we are not looking at a large ticket tie-up.
Yes, if any fintech give them any model where the leads comes in, which can be fulfilled, which can be underwritten by us, we will evaluate those models. But large ticket on digital platform, because the idea was that small ticket digital journey is where fintech players grow. But if the leads, if they can provide leads for secured products, we can evaluate that. At this point in time, we haven't, we haven't gone into any partnership on a large ticket large ticket, Anuj .
Okay, got it. Thank you. That's very clear. The second question is on the cost of borrowing. So we have seen, you know, and you did talk about that, that the cost of borrowings are rising for you because of the higher risk weight from the bank side on NBFCs. So can you talk about what kind of hike we are talking about on bank lending? And, given the liquidity is very tight on the money market side as well, what kind of cost of impact should we be building in the coming quarters?
Anuj, if you look at last quarter, our cost of funds went up by 7 basis points, and our yield went up by 8 basis points. I also mentioned that we have increased our lending rates by 20-25 basis points across all customer segments, all customer and product segments. We will try and pass off increase in cost of funds. In terms of looking at the liquidity situation and where do we see the cost of funds might go marginally up in quarter four, but we don't see. And related to the risk weights, I think a few banks have reached out to us in terms of negotiating for the rates. We have not finalized anything. We are in discussion with them.
We will evaluate, but we don't see any material increase in cost of funds. Yes, there will be marginal, because I think, but we should be able to manage that, with the increase in the yields, which I just mentioned. We have increased our lending rates across all customer segments.
Got it. Got it. And lastly, because of the higher risk weight from the banking side on unsecured lending, are we witnessing higher bank competition on the secured lending? And this will be maybe more relevant for mortgages. Is there some evidence of that visible on the street, or it's business as usual there?
No, Anuj, we work in a very competitive environment. We compete with large NBFCs, we compete with private banks, and so it is a competitive environment. I completely agree. And especially the Jan to March quarter again is an important quarter for the banking industry, so there will be competition. We have to operate in this competitive environment, and we have our differentiation, and we have our... we manage this business. We have done it over the last several years, and we will continue to do that. Yes, there will be the shift towards secured, which we are also focusing on, but we really look at the entire, we cut through the entire customer segments, from our retail LAP to small ticket secured loans to micro LAP. So we really...
And we have built these capabilities, the SME loans, which is all secured. So clearly we have built these capabilities, and also the underwriting capabilities over a period of time. That has helped us in terms of managing this competition.
Got it. And can Somesh talk about on the mortgage side, is there something incremental or it's the same thing there as well?
... So, Pankaj here, I think, if I have to reference the question back to the cost of borrowing, I think, for us as well, the cost of borrowings have gone up by about five basis points. But, you might have also observed, you know, in our commentary as well, I think, the NHB contribution in our loan, you know, mix of liability I think is improving. We are right now at about 23%. And NHB, you know, as a component is just like CASA. So technically, that is what it is. So, you know, that really helps us in optimizing the, you know, borrowings. To your question on competition intensity, of course, everybody wants to also build their books, and especially in the last quarter, so there will be competition intensity.
But I think, the part of the propositions I spoke about, you know, a couple of things, we also launched a host of, you know, product propositions. We have a lot of customer insights, specifically in the last quarter. We built, you know, customer propositions, which have really taken off well in the marketplace. We have Finverse, a unified digital lending platform that I, you know, kind of mentioned, also is really helping, you know, our teams to get better face time with customers. So that is also resulting in, you know, reduced, you know, turnaround times, we becoming more and more predictable. And that is also resulting in, one, one more, you know, aspect, which is, you know, gaining contribution of, disbursements from our own ecosystem. I think that is where, you know, we also, I think done very well in this quarter.
9% of our disbursements actually is coming in from our own ecosystem, which is, you know, the distributors of ABCL and other companies, is our own employees, you know, within the ABG, you know, ecosystem. And since I spoke about the ABCD, you know, the omni-channel platform, in the beginning when we started, you know, getting leads from branches, that also is starting to, you know, gain traction there, so that also is helping us to get to 9%. So I think competition intensity will be there, but I think, we have to power our propositions, work, work on making it more and more frictionless, at the same time, make sure that the quality is paramount.
Got it. Got it, Pankaj. Thank you very much, and all the best.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Avinash Singh from Emkay Global. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for the opportunity. A couple of questions. The first one would be regarding unsecured business. First one would be regarding unsecured business, where you have highlighted that, I mean, a large part of your unsecured business is covered by guarantee, credit guarantee schemes. Now, if you can help us understand the efficacy of this efficacy of the guarantee schemes, because, I mean, these guarantee schemes provide cover, but in terms of the, in terms of the, you know, the time taken to receive the, you know, money from the time your sort of NPA starts, historically, generally, it has been a kind of a mixed experience.
And I mean, you know, the community has been mixed around sort of ability to receive money from the guarantee schemes in time. If you can just help us understand this, you know, efficacy of these guarantee schemes in your context of business loans or business unsecured loans, then I will come to the second question.
So I just at the start want to say it has worked out very well for us. We pay a certain guarantee premium to SIDBI, which guarantees 75% of our capital or the principal outstanding. And if there is a default, 75% of the principal is, we get it, get it back from SIDBI. In terms of processes, how much time it takes, it takes anywhere around 12 months or so, 12-15 months or so in terms of refunds coming in from SIDBI. At times it goes even faster, at times, it may go slightly over 12 months. But has worked out very, very well for us, and it mitigates our risk in this, in this customer segment, especially when, when the exposure is unsecured.
Okay, thank you. The second one is regarding the capital allocation. So, if I recall, out of INR 30 billion that AB Capital raised last year, I believe close to INR 13-14 billion had been infused into Aditya Birla Finance. Now, so that means that, okay, an extra INR 16 billion of capital should be with the holding company.
Yes.
So over the next 12 months, what is the plan sort of? I mean, how do you see that this capital being infused across your two lending subsidiary primary or even health insurance will require some capital infusion. So what are your plans with this capital currently, or anything else, or any other capital you will need over the next 12 months? Thanks.
Avinash, as we had mentioned at the time of capital raise that we did for INR 3,000 crore, we had said, majority of the allocation will be happening towards the lending businesses. And so far, we have infused about INR 1,600 crore into our ABFL. We still have INR 1,400 crore from that. Over the next one year, we don't see or envisage any capital requirement from our health insurance, because if you recollect, last year itself, we had raised primary capital of INR 700 crore from ADIA, which will take care of the needs of the business for the near future. However, for our lending businesses, we may require... we will be requiring capital, which we'll be providing over the next one year, and the amount that we have should suffice us till the closure of FY 2025.
That's our plan, and that's after that. We'll evaluate how do the things go forward and how much of capital we'll be requiring for the next two, three years.
As of now, this, the RBI, sort of, requirement being Aditya Birla Housing Finance being in the, that upper layer, you will have, I mean, as of today, the requirement is to list by September 25. Sorry, Aditya Birla Finance, my bad.
Yes.
Okay, thank you.
... Thank you. Next question is from the line of Nidhesh from Investec. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity. Firstly, on the NBFC, as secured business is expected to grow faster, corporate business are also seeing resilient growth. How should we think about profitability, ROA, ROE going forward?
So our ROA, ROE is in the range of 2.5%. If you look at the first 9 months, our ROE is 2.48. We are committed to improving the ROEs in the coming years, and clearly, the product mix will drive that. So today, if you look at retail and SME contributes close to 67%, we are looking at that mix going up to 75% of the overall loan book in the next 2-3 years, and that should help us improve our margins from here on. We are almost close to 7%, and with the change in this product mix, we should be able to grow closer to 7.5%. That's what we are working on, and that should help us improve our ROEs.
Okay, sure. So the corporate businesses are unlikely to grow at, corporate business is likely to grow at a lower rate than the overall balance sheet growth?
Yeah.
Okay. Secondly, in the secured business, what is the sourcing mix that we have? Secured and business and unsecured business. What is the sourcing mix that we have there?
Secured, you mean sourcing the channel mix you are? Yeah.
Yes.
The 60% is direct. For secured, the business, 61% is direct and 39% is through DSA.
And the unsecured business?
Unsecured businesses, 53% is DFAs, 41% is digital and 6% is direct.
And by digital, we mean, fintech partners or customers are coming directly to us or?
We also mentioned about the ecosystem, which we have within the Birla Group, which we have the Udyog Plus we mentioned. We have integrated Udyog Plus to our Ultratech app. So but those are in the initial Stages at this point in time, but the supply chain business which we do within the group and outside, I think that's done digitally and that's our digital journey.
Sure. And, secondly, on the life insurance business, how are the trends in terms of product level margins on a YoY basis? Have you seen any changes to the product level margins on a Yo Y basis?
Product level margins, Dinesh, on product level margins across various products, of course, there is no change. Like I mentioned, what changes at the net margin level, obviously is the composition of the business, and we've been able to maintain our GLP contribution, like I said, at 21%, which is similar to what it was last year. So that hasn't gone up, as compared to what has happened in the industry, and therefore we've been able to maintain slightly better than last year. We are at 15.5 last year, we are at 15.6 net margins in the nine months of this year.
Sure, sure. And the tie-up that we have done in the Axis Bank, when we should expect that to start having benefit to our growth?
So like I said, IDFC First Bank started in quarter three, latter half of quarter three. Normally banks start with a smaller portion of their business, which is typically non-branch banking. So you will see the real benefit because in this one that IDFC will get into the full spectrum in April of next year. Bank of Maharashtra will start earlier than that in the whole spectrum. And Axis Bank, like I said, we've just signed the cooperation agreement. We will start with a few zones somewhere in the end of February, beginning of March. And through next year we will expand our presence in the Axis Bank counter, too.
Sure. And, coming to health insurance there, historically, our combined ratio has been improving, but last two years, so we have seen the combined ratio have started to deteriorate. So what is driving that? Are we seeing higher loss ratio or it is, the OpEx ratio which is impacting our combined ratio? And what is the strategy to improve combined ratio? What is the timeframe that we should think about?
So Nidhesh, Amit here. So as I said, our losses and combined ratio peak up in Q3, so we expect combined ratio will go down in Q4, both on a quarter-on-quarter and also YoY. We show a combined ratio compared to what we have shown both last year, compared to last year and also quarter-on-quarter. But our combined ratios are going down year-on-year. They have not gone up, barring yeah, that's the, that's actually that is the position, yeah.
If you can also talk about what is the loss ratio for the nine months?
So loss ratio for nine months, I think they are trending well, both for retail and group. Though group, I must say, there is some pricing pressure because group business has become more competitive on which the changes in the EOM, but they are trending well compared to the last financial year.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you. That's it from my side. Bye-bye now.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraint, we will take that as the last question. For unanswered questions, the team will get in touch with you. I would like to hand the conference over to Ms. Vishakha Mulye for closing comments.
Thank you so much. Really appreciate all of you joining the call, and look forward to keeping in touch. Thank you.
Thank you very much. On behalf of Aditya Birla Capital Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.