Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Poonawalla Fincorp Limited Q1 FY 2025-2026 Earnings Conference Call. We have with us today on the call Mr. Arvind Kapil, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Sunil Samdani, Executive Director, Mr. Shriram Iyer, Chief Credit and Analytics Officer, and other senior management officials. As a reminder, all possible 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 the conference call, please signal the operator by pressing star, then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Arvind Kapil, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Poonawalla Fincorp Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you. A very good evening to all of you. It's always a pleasure to interact, and maybe the right time looking at the excitement today, I think the best would be to start with our take on the industry and how the best way to welcome the first earnings call probably for the financial year 2025-2026. Let me begin by sharing an industry perspective from our lens and how we're building the Poonawalla Fincorp in the context of the way industry is behaving. Firstly, we witnessed a few bullet points so that all of us are on the same page the way we see it. We witnessed a robust demand for retail loans, and we see a strong consumer confidence in spending, which supports the economic growth outlook, so we are very positive on it.
Secondly, we see we're sensibly using this opportunity to build our secured book as of now, and at the same time, we're also building an unsecured book in a well-calibrated way to follow it. So it'll be. You'll see a substantially more secure book for this financial year, followed by an increasing unsecured book as a broad approach. This is exactly in line with our risk-first approach of our building blocks. We see a huge role and usage of tech and agentic AI. The way we see it in the industry, I think that's been the game-changer vectors on which we're working, whether it's risk calibration as a value-add over traditional techniques for more accuracy or for fraud detection, plus quality assessment in underwriting.
We have the risk-first approach, which means if we have to choose between risk and growth ever, without blinking an eye, we will choose risk as an option. We don't see that time. We see a very optimistic road ahead for the country. We also see immense value getting added from the credit bureaus, and the name of the game will be risk calibration, and one of the cornerstones for any company in my limited view will be strong risk analytics. Let me begin with a few comments on the strategic front. The development of the strategic front this quarter marks a significant milestone in terms of as we completed a full year of successful execution of especially the building blocks, the strategic roadmap, you may call it. The results are very clearly right in front of all of us.
Over the past one year, our priority has been on laying robust foundations and building scalable systems. Over the next four quarters, three to four, our focus remains on building the AUM, pulling on all the levers that we have set in place. I'm happy to share that we're already seeing a very healthy credit-calibrated growth in the existing products and a very strong momentum in the newly launched businesses that we have over this quarter. Other than AUM, we've also got a clear focus on AI, risk calibration, and credit costs, which is now lower compared to the previous quarter and probably a noteworthy number. I'll cover that in detail as well. We've also substantially strengthened our long-term liabilities through raising equity. I'll cover that in detail as well. So that's a quick overview that I'll cover. Let's start with performance update.
I'd like to give a quick update on the first quarter stuff on the results. Our AUM grew at 53% year-on-year, 15.8% quarter-on-quarter standing at around INR 41,273 crores as of June 30th, 2025. Total disbursements in the quarter grew by around 13.6% quarter-on-quarter at around INR 10,651 crores. We expect healthy AUM growth in the financial year, which will likely be not just better, I believe, than our guidance for this financial year, around 35% - 40%. During this quarter, we witnessed a moderation in our net interest margin, which was anticipated as part of our ongoing portfolio calibration, particularly with the STPL book transitioning to low yield coupled with low contribution in the overall book. This recalibration is a deliberate and strategic move to improve risk-adjusted return of our portfolio.
As we actively scale up disbursements of the newly well-calibrated high-quality book of STPL and other new products, which we've already kickstarted, and gradually reduce the share of the old STPL book, we expect NIM to be back at around 9% within the next three to four quarters. Next, I want to highlight the risk-first approach in the organization, maybe a minute or two here. Let me give you a glimpse of our trends in credit cost, which will be later covered at length by Shriram. Here's a quick snapshot. Our first EMI bounces have improved by over 25% compared to our last quarter, and there's been a sequential improvement in credit cost during the quarter. The credit cost improved by 53 basis points to 2.61 for all businesses.
Another important point here that I'm going to cover is the credit cost for 12 core products, which excludes STPL, which is a new disclosure we're doing this time, improved to 1.43%, driven by around 80% of risk-calibrated AUM. So let me just explain this to you. On an overall basis, we've come down by 53 basis points to 2.61%. If I exclude STPL, we have approximately 12 products, and the credit cost of that is close to 1.43%, which I would tend to believe is in the range of relatively the best in the industry so far. This would be approximately 80% of your 41,000 or total. You can calculate that. This adds, I believe, considerable strength and solidity to our risk-first approach and understanding of our credit portfolio.
This additional disclosure that we're doing the first time should give adequate visibility to investors on what road are we walking, what quantum of stuff we're working on, how rich our analytics is, how effective we could be on scale. As we assess our credit cost outlook, we anticipate some quarter-on-quarter variability in these building blocks due to changes in composition mix, as our consumer durable, for example, goes up and stuff like that. We internally are focused and confident that our disciplined approach of credit calibration plus collection will translate into a year-on-year improvement in credit cost metrics with a noteworthy reduction in two to three years for sustained profits. Basically, what I'm trying to allude to is that, forget the variability a little bit here and there.
Broadly, if I were to take a big picture of a year-on-year, we see a declining trend on the two figures I shared with you overall, plus excluding STPL for the visibility, and we see noteworthy improvements on these levels in two to three years. The rest I'll leave it, but Shriram kind of covers it at greater length. I'll share a quick snapshot so far of the robust AUM. Just a quick summary so that we're all on the same page: reduction in credit cost, including a new disclosure of excluding STPL. Let's move on from here to the borrowing part. Let me give you a colour on the borrowing mix. I think in the last three to four months, predominantly last quarter, on the borrowing side, which is the liability side, we're making noteworthy improvements in NCDs.
The share of NCDs in our total borrowing has increased from approximately 7% as of March 2025 to approximately 24% as of June 2025. So you can well imagine in three to four months, we've already added additionally another 1,000-odd crores in July, which is in public domain. This cost is fairly noteworthy reduced compared to the turbulence we were getting from banks. So I think it's a significant positive step in terms of 24% to probably 26%-27% odd as I speak to you maybe, but it's a noteworthy area that we've picked up within the first 12-13 months and especially significant over the last three months. Most importantly, the Board of Directors have approved the raising of the funds by issuance of share equity on a preferential basis to the promoter at the meeting concluded today. Very significant step in my view.
Subject to all requisite approvals, the promoter shall infuse INR 1,500 crores equity capital on a preferential basis at a price which we have disclosed in a public domain of 452.5 per share. This, I believe, will strengthen our capital base, infuse further confidence in our long-term sustainable strategy. From a product update, we've launched a couple of businesses, six to seven businesses. Let me give you a quick sense between existing and new businesses, what's the kind of momentum. We've tried to give some numbers here to give you a colour on what quantum of numbers so that every quarter you could get a sense there. Our last book grew by 128% year-on-year and 22% quarter-on-quarter. Similarly, business loans grew by 57% year-on-year and 10% quarter-on-quarter. On new businesses, the first, let me cover prime personal loans that was launched in August 2024.
It's exhibiting a very healthy pace of growth. Incremental disbursements of more than INR 300 crores in the month of June 2025, which highlights healthy traction in the market. This number reflects the credibility that we have with our channel partners and institutionalized turnaround time that we have built at the back end for quick response to the market. Just to reiterate, through the door, quality of the prime PPL customer profile is substantially better as incremental sourcing is skewed towards better income profiles, best-in-class company categories. And our risk analytics is playing a key role. The strength and quality of our customer base is looking very encouraging. This is a clear indication that we are attracting financially better profiles. These are individuals who have capacity and also the intent to repay. These metrics are clearly a reflection of our unwavering commitment to risk-first.
O ur industry-first PL Prime Digital 24x7, we've started to clock healthy run rates there, by the way. Both on the website where customers are directly coming to us, as well as from our fintech partners who are creating embedded journeys of ours. We have created embedded journeys which will strengthen us with the first right to refusal. Imagine a fintech who comes to me because we have the digital journey of a prime customer, white-collar employee, and he chooses to give me my kind of pricing just because I give a 24x7 convenience. We believe that this will be cutting-edge in the next four to six quarters. We've maintained that on a daily run rate. We have started every week moving upwards, and it's a very healthy rate of growth. A quick snapshot of the Gold Loan.
As our digital products are scaling rapidly, we're also doubling down on our physical presence, especially through Gold Loan branches. Gold Loan adds strength to our secured bouquet of products. It's a very healthy ROA business in a seasoned state. Our customer journey is settled, and our product is also well-received in the market. Initial feelers are very positive. We already have disbursed around INR 31 crores in the month of June, and through the set of branches that we launched in phase one, we are continuing to scale up the business momentum across the set of new branches as well. We are receiving a very fantastic initial response on the productivity per branch. We're happy to share with you that out of the 400 branches we committed, 80 branches as we speak are already operational, and they could be across Gujarat, Haryana, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra.
We are on track to meet our objectives of launching 400 branches by March 2026. 95% of these branches have come up in tier two and tier three cities. Moving on to consumer durable, we officially launched it, I think, on 22nd April this year. The earlier momentum is quite promising. Towards the end of the last quarter, we have already signed up with 3,000 dealers. To give you a sense, 160 locations. We plan to be present at 210 locations across 12,000 dealer points by the end of the financial year. So from 3,000 dealers, we'll probably go to 12,000 dealers by the end of this financial year. The business traction is building well. We've already acquired 15,000 customers, INR 34 crores in the month of June in a short span. I think every quarter we're looking at a very decent momentum here.
We introduced the PFIN EMI card, which is designed to give customer access to pre-approved consumer durable offers that they can utilize at the convenience of any of our dealer touchpoints. This product is also getting well-received in the market, and the penetration of PFIN EMI card on our consumer durable customer base is much higher than our expectations. Our next newly launched business, commercial vehicle loan. We launched the business on the 17th of March and are already disbursing INR 92 crores. Our disbursement trajectory is on an upward trend with disbursements of INR 47 crores in the month of June. We commenced CV business in Maharashtra, West Bengal, and expanded into three geographies like NCR, Haryana, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh. As of now, we're present across 27 locations in 10 states.
We are activating Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Karnataka in the upcoming months to continue increasing the geographical footprint. By the end of quarter one, we completed onboarding approximately 200+ distribution partners in India. We intend to double this over the next one quarter. The hiring plan for expansion also remains on track. We have onboarded 50+ relationship managers, zonal, regional, area, all the levels. As mentioned in last call about our plan to roll out mobility solution, we've successfully launched a comprehensive digital solution in the current quarter, a digital customer onboarding platform with 25+ API integrations for frictionless customer onboarding experience. This went live in June this year. Even now, the emphasis is entirely on the used CV segment. We are happy to share that to further strengthen our presence in this space, we'll be launching even the new commercial vehicle at our appropriate pricing.
Now, on education loans, a quick sense, we've launched education loans in the middle of March, and in just 90 days, we've logged in 4,000-plus education loan files. Till date, we have already onboarded approximately 100 partners. Now, remember, in education loans, you've got counselors as your partners, and some of them are very large-scale companies. These are key education consultants who employ over 100 members' dedicated sales teams. By the end of FY 2025-2026, we will scale up our network to 500+ education consultants and will sanction approximately closer to 4,000 students within the financial year. We are offering an industry-first initiative of providing digital instant sanction in the education loan industry. The team has crossed. We have first disbursed a milestone of INR 56 crores in the third month itself. That's June 2025. That gives a sense of kind of momentum or ground-level feels of these businesses.
Let me give you a quick sense now. Change our course to digital marketing and AI. Let me move on to the most important vectors that give us the cutting edge as we scale. These are digital transformations. These are digital marketing and AI. I'll cover each one of them with a bit more granularity because we are investing time and effort on it, and we see a huge amount of correlations with our strategy on the digital journeys as well. The digital transformation perspective for building a future-ready customer-first lending institution, we're working on three key strategic initiatives aimed at driving business impact and future readiness within the organization. Each of these initiatives are anchored in the core priorities of a modern lending institution like ours, improving our efficiencies and enhancing customer engagement. Our first initiative is sales efficiency and customer acquisition cost optimization.
One of the most critical focus areas of any lending business is these two. We're currently undertaking a comprehensive three-pronged initiative that aims to streamline sales workflows, leveraging digital tools for performance visibility, enhancing conversion effectiveness. This project is designed to create a leaner, smarter, and more accountable sales ecosystem. So these initiatives are like rapid response sales deployment using location intelligence. We are building an agentic assistive intelligence at point of sale. What will set us apart is our contextual haptic feedback system, which actually gives us discrete prompts to executives during live customer interaction. This enables AI-driven comprehension real-time recommendations. Performance KPI link nudging engines that is a Nudge IQ that we like to call. The second initiative is unified customer experience. This initiative is centered on unifying and elevating the overall customer experience.
In today's competitive financial landscape, customer experience encompasses every interaction a customer has with our brand. Our approach involves integrating touchpoints, reducing friction, and delivering consistent personalized experience, which is why we call this experience and not just service, and our approach will be intelligent, omnichannel, humanoid response layers. The third initiative in our digital journey is a next-gen digital journey that focuses on the creation of complex, multi-layered digital journeys tailored to the diverse, evolving needs of our customers. These journeys are designed to offer seamless navigation, contextual interactions, and intelligent decisions across multiple products. The goal is not just digitization, but the differentiation that we create, positioning us ahead of the curve, role-based app interfaces that work seamlessly and orchestrated by an overarching system. For that matter, multi-layered verification with inbuilt APIs that we are creating. Automatic disbursal pathways.
Let me pivot now towards the next most important vector for us and where a lot of work is happening internally. It is expanding our digital reach. While everyone is building the top of their physical footprint, let me tell you that we are not just building the footprint, but also accelerating our digital reach. It's being achieved by building best-in-class digital marketing capabilities and interventions which are focused on creating robust, scalable, and data-driven ecosystems. Let me highlight our progress in a few key items. First is the significant progress that we made in scaling our digital marketing interface. Marketing initiatives leveraging AI, both effectiveness and efficiency. On AI-driven experimentation, over the past six months, we've conducted more than 500 experiments across various vectors, including location, audience segmentation, creative personas, and end-to-end funnel optimization.
These experiments have enabled us to scale our digital marketing efforts by 5x, which is why I'm making the effort of sharing this with you because it's making a lot of difference to the customers who are moving to us on the website. That's the key takeaway. Imagine a company that had nothing on the customers coming on the website or app, and today, on a daily basis or weekly basis, we have significant increase. Now, to diversify and strengthen our acquisition strategy, we're moving towards an omnichannel engine to expand our digital presence and reach target customers via various channels. We've achieved channel diversification towards app. Today, 44% of digital marketing disbursals are coming from app. Results of our strategic transition from a web-only source model to a more diversified web-plus app sourcing strategy.
We're in the process of scaling our presence beyond Google and Meta ecosystem across multiple digital affiliates, publishers, networks, enabling us to access ad inventories across thousands of platforms with AI-led, time bidding at low cost of acquisition. This is a pretty significant step because this will start creating a cutting edge for us in attracting customers, and these acquisition costs start getting lowered with times to come. Thirdly, investing in optimizing the entire customer journey to improve conversions and manage acquisition costs. We conducted an in-depth analysis to understand our customer behavior and key motivation factors driving them to take action and utilizing the insights to get them back on the journey. We've established early warning mechanisms to identify and address potential breakages in the funnel in real time. This proactive approach has helped us improve end-to-end funnel conversions.
Fourth, we are focusing on building capabilities that help enhance our visibility on AI-powered answers. On search engines, AI platforms as of today are a large part of Google search results. It's driven by AI. Fifth, we are investing in AI-led martech for growth, onboarding industry-based tools to manage our own channels, such as WhatsApp, SMS, Rich Communication Services, we could call it, which offers unlimited opportunities for high-conversion campaigns. Sixth, we are revamping our app to drive engagement. Our monthly app installation has grown by 10x in the last three months, depicting the growing importance of mobile platforms. So these are a fair amount of effort and time and investing happening in this area. But this will now cover the next important vector. The key emerging strength for us is AI. We've launched a long-term initiative to predict customer health through a unified risk and revenue lens.
We are creating a dedicated innovation space that brings analytics and AI together. We believe this fusion could create the magic and excitement that creates a set of new products, fostering rapid and iterative learnings. That's important, right, for a company to kind of generate something on a constant basis. And that's the kind of machine we are trying to build in our heads and in reality. By embedding this fusion of technologies into our customer onboarding processes, we gain a 360 view of each customer's profile, assessing credit risk, revenue potential, and overall health in the real time. It's a long-duration project, and we are working with IT on this. It's a very rich project and a fair amount of work required on it. Let me give you a quick update. Now, we've already announced AI projects that are running in the organization.
Additionally to that, we've identified 10 incremental projects now. This is just to give you a sense that now we're scaling a total of 35 projects of relevance, of which eight are already completed, by the way, and executed. Let me give you an update on the incremental projects. A quick snapshot. I'll run through it just to give you a sense. In HR, for candidate search, we are building a sourcing engine that uses job portals for identifying ideal candidates, leveraging AI to streamline and enhance the recruitment process. By adopting AI-driven algorithms, the system can analyze job roles, requirements, and automatically source candidates as profiles. This enables the creation of an active and dynamic candidate pool. This gives us a strength to pick and choose at the right time with speed.
Another one in HR is the integration of employee relationship into the complaint resolution management CRM, which aims to automate a current manual workflow. The idea is, whether it's a support function like AI, finance, or various others, we are reaching a level where every department is working around creating projects which could solve the problem using AI and iteratively get better over the next two to four quarters. In finance, for example, we've identified three AI projects to give you guys a sense: Finance bot, Payment operations, Invoice auto verification. The first one will create and implement the finance bot for analyzing competition financial reports and internal financial data. It is designed to profile real-time insights, trends, comparative analysis to intelligence by leveraging natural language processing and autonomous agentic AI-driven solutions.
The bot can interpret user queries, extract relevant financial metrics, and generate meaningful visualizations and summaries for the users. For payment operations, the automation of the approval, invoice management, and tagging processes aimed at streamlining financial workflows and reducing manual intervention. By implementing intelligent automation, the system can efficiently route invoices for approval, manage records with minimum errors. This enhances operational speed and ensures compliance with internal policies. Overall, it leads to faster processing, better audit readiness, and of course, productivity. Another AI project that is worked on in finance is invoice auto verification, where invoices will be read and verified based on the policy. This process of reading and verifying based on predefined policies and use cases is designed to enhance accuracy and efficiency by automating invoice validation.
In treasury, for example, we are implementing a query bot for live monitoring and analysis of market movements that's designed to deliver real-time insights into the financial trends, news, and media events that impact market positions. Powered by AI and natural language processing, the bot continuously scans, interprets market data, news articles, and social media to identify emerging patterns. It enables users to perform deep dives into specific sectors and companies. In operations, for example, we've identified three additional projects being rolled out: auto knock-off waiver in mature contracts, re-KYC, and stamp verification, to give you a few ideas. The AI-enabled console for stamp paper reconciliation is designed to automate and optimize the entire lifecycle of stamp paper management. It leverages artificial intelligence to predict procurement needs based on historical consumption data. The system fetches state-wise and value-wise stamping charges to allocate appropriate digital stamps.
The idea is that whether it's finance, treasury, operations, whether it's as simple as a re-KYC, we're using AI, and it's building the blocks. So it's the mindset of the organization that's moving towards a certain quality of efficiency. So, for example, take re-KYC. It's a simple item, but the implementation of AI-based automation communication system aims to transform customer engagement and compliance management by leveraging intelligent automation. This system enables timely, personalized outreach. Stamp verification, for example, a console for overall stamp paper reconciliation. By integrating AI, the console can streamline the reconciliation process and provide valuable insights to optimize procurement strategies. Imagine an admin and infrastructure where taking out travel booking automation, cabs, flights, hotels. So the chatbot interacts with the users to collect their trip details and then processes the booking through integrated sales platforms. So it's not about how big or small it is. It's about.
The message I want to leave is that the AI that we started off three quarters ago, we're building it and trying to transform. I think we've managed to get the mindsets changed. The whole organization is talking a certain language of innovation, re-engineering of processes, and getting smart because we want to create a smart organization. Before I end the AI piece, let me give you an update on the snapshot of the work we've done on AI for us approaching credit underwriting. That's one of the big ones for us. On our AI-led transformation is not just a technology upgrade for us. It's a strategic evolution, how we underwrite credit, manage operations, and analyze portfolios. Several high-impact initiatives are currently under development. These design to unlock scale, precision, and of course, agility.
Our upcoming announcements in commercial and consumer-owned underwriting will bring sharper customer insights, faster decisioning, setting new benchmarks on the turnaround accuracy. See, for us, it's not just about using AI and technology and analytics for turnaround times. We're looking at a very high level of accuracy. Luckily, whether it's technology and analytics or technology on an overall basis, there's a fair amount of options to actually upgrade even the traditional methods to be more accurate. And that's what our experiences are teaching us. Another key capability slated for release in the second quarter is our AI-powered credit bureau analyzer. This solution will enable sharper visibility into borrowing behavior, delinquency patterns, and credit exposure. We're also building intelligent agents that will streamline document workflows, data entry, reduce operational lag, and improve pre-underwriting readiness. These systems are expected to significantly lower processing costs while enhancing compliance, speed, and customer experiences.
Deployment is expected by late quarter three, but we are very excited about it. As you can hear me covering these details, it's important because this could be pretty significant key from an industry point of view as well. Both on accuracy first and the turnaround time and the speed of automation in terms of how fast we can move forward across products. Our work in portfolio intelligence is equally exciting. We're developing advanced ML and LLM-based analyzers that will identify risk signals early, monitor behavioral trends, and generate actionable insights. These tools are designed to simplify month-end reviews, prioritize high-impact segments, and eliminate bias through data-driven clarity, all using natural language interaction with AI. Roll-out is planned between quarter three and quarter four. Our direction is clear. We are embedding AI-first approach into our problem-solving ability.
We believe that institutions that integrate AI-first strategy and use this simplicity into their core will lead the next wave of financial innovation. Quick snapshot on the debt strategy I covered earlier. We continue to optimize the cost of borrowing. We're broadening our lenders and investor base. As part of a long-term debt strategy, we aim to achieve a share of NCDs of around 35% of the total borrowing for the next couple of years. We shall be following highest standard governance. We've already achieved 24% as of June. In line with the guidance provided in the last call, we've successfully raised about INR 5,200 crores through the secured NCDs and INR 250 crores from subordinated Tier 2 capital and ECBs of INR 54 crores during quarter one. As a result, our share of NCDs from 7%, as I said, was moved to 24%.
Plus, we've added around INR 1,000 crores in July itself. Finally, to summarize from all perspectives, whatever has been said over the last 12 months has been clinically executed with proper planning in every vector of business and every word of our commitment. Be it new business launches, be it the timeline, be it AUM growth, be it risk, be it AI, be it analytics, be it liabilities, be it NCDs, be it credit cost. That's another one, this one, credit cost. This gives us the conviction that our strategy is professionally on the right track, delivering the intended objective. Our strategy focused on driving innovation through AI, digital journeys, and risk analytics is gaining very healthy momentum. Yes, we've managed to get ET Now's most innovative organization of the year 2025. Additionally, our commitment to enhance customer experience was acknowledged in the Express BFSI Technology Awards.
We've also won the Technology Senate Award of AI by the Indian Express Group, and we continue to maintain our confidence on the high for growth trajectory, maintaining a balanced and sensible risk level. We're very, very conscious of the commitments we make. With this, I'd like to hand over to Shriram to give you a colour on the risk management.
Thank you. Thank you, Arvind. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. The government vision of Viksit Bharat underscores the pivotal role of NBFCs in driving economic momentum. The recent regulatory measures reaffirm the strategic emphasis on NBFC-led credit expansion as a key lever of stimulating growth. Union Budget further highlights continued focus on strengthening the NBFC regulatory framework, aiming to improve governance, risk management, and financial stability.
A significant change to the new income tax regime by increasing the tax rebate threshold and adjusting the slab structure, resulting in zero tax liability for incomes up to 12 lakhs, is a strong stimulus to the consumption lending. Further, the retail lending trends from the bureau reflect a healthy growth of 27% from NBFCs year on year. Poonawalla Fincorp's strategic investment in the last few quarters of being ready with multiple product lines across the retail lending space aligns with the market potential coupled with the current industry momentum. We are well positioned to capitalize the opportunity with a well-calibrated credit mix. The secured product launches have ensured a balanced AUM mix along with diversification. Our secured mix to the AUM was 49% for the quarter one FY 2025 to now 57% for the quarter one FY 2026.
Focusing on the asset quality, let me give you a glimpse on our key trends. Our GNPA has remained stable at 1.84%. Our first EMI bounces have improved over 25% compared to last quarter. There have been sequential improvements in the annualized and quarterly credit cost. The annualized credit cost improved by 288 basis points. That's from 5.49 in FY 2025 to 2.61 for the quarter one FY 2026. The quarterly credit cost has improved by 53 basis points from 3.14 for the quarter four FY 2025 to 2.61 for the quarter one FY 2026. Please note, the detail shared is for the overall PFL book. We are doing an additional disclosure of 12 businesses without STPL, wherein the credit cost is 1.43%.
This 1.43% is driven by approximately 80% of the risk-calibrated AUM, reflecting PFL's robust credit underwriting collections and portfolio management practices, positioning it favorably within the industry landscape. As we assess our credit cost outlook, we anticipate, with composition mix changes in the building block state, we maintain a guidance of 1.5%-2%, but internally, we are committed and confident that our disciplined approach of credit calibration plus collections will translate into improved credit cost metrics year on year, with noteworthy reduction in two to three years for sustained profits. A quick snapshot of the short-term STPL portfolio, which was at 8% of the total on-book AUM as of March 25. We are down to about 4% as of June 2025.
Our credit cost for short-term STPL book has come down to INR 64 crores for the quarter one FY 2026, has come back to INR 137 crores in the quarter four FY 2025, which is a reduction of 53% over the previous quarter. We are actively monitoring the rollout of our digital lending products across both salaried and self-employed segments. Our strategy focuses on expanding credit swim lanes to capture business opportunities while maintaining prudent risk controls. Teams are continuously refining the decision engine framework, leveraging diverse data sources to enhance credit assessments. Further, let me give a short deep dive on key drivers the team focuses on supporting the calibrated risk framework as we build our AUM. On the design recalibrations, the diversification in the business strategy leads to a shift in sourcing mix, aligning to the change requires a continuous risk calibration process.
In-house models go through a continuous evolution, focusing on building sharper cohort-level models driven by varied sources of information. With the increasing complexity and variety of data coupled with the new product launches, multi-layered model strategies are being designed. The risk strategies driven by the model support data-driven decisions, focusing on operational efficiency of the credit processes, assesses through auto-rejection, augmenting the risk framework via deviation level, risk mitigation, exposure limitation, and pricing. Our pivotal transformation quarter-on-quarter in debt management practices and initiatives shoulder the strategic business growth and providing the confidence to scale. This is powered by advanced analytics, GenAI, and best-in-class digital collections infrastructure. Right KPIs at the fingertips of the ground-level collection team support to influence the data-driven decision and optimize performance at every stage.
In quarter one FY 2026, we have implemented the human-less field agent allocation system that reduces the timetable from three to four days to under a few hours to complete allocation enabling faster customer engagement post-delinquency across digital tele calling and field channels. Centralization and standardization of the processes has reduced subjective decision-making and human errors, thus ensuring fairness and consistency. This data-driven approach blended with digital process adoption has led to optimized resource utilization and efficiency. As I conclude, we are energized by the opportunities ahead and deeply confident in our team's capabilities and steadfast commitment to excellence. By harnessing our technological edge and staying anchored to a risk-first approach, we remain focused on consistently delivering remarkable results.
Yeah, thank you, Shriram, and good evening, everyone. Let me quickly take you through the financial highlights for the quarter. The asset under management stood at INR 41,273 crores, reporting a strong growth of 53% year- on-y ear and 16% quarter- on-q uarter. With continued momentum across all our products. In line with our debt strategy, we projected AUM growth. We have further diversified our liability book with a focus on long-term funds. The share of long-term borrowing has gone up 14% quarter- on- quarter from 61% to 75% on the overall borrowings. As of June of 2025, we increased our NCD mix, including the sub debt, to 24% of the overall borrowing from about 6% in March of 2025. Further, in July 2025, we raised additional INR 1,005 crores.
With this, the total YTD NCD raise goes to INR 6,463 crores. Going forward, we will continue to focus on raising long-term funding through NCD and maintain a prudent balance of long-term to short-term funds. The share of variable rate borrowing stood at 56%, with another 11% of capital market borrowing with an average tenor of approximately three months puts us at an advantageous position with declining interest rate environment and returns. Our net interest income, including the fees and other income, continued to grow healthy, standing at INR 768 crores for Q1 of FY 2025, up 7% quarter on quarter. This is despite an increase in share of secured assets book, recalibration of short-term STPL portfolio, and higher debt-to-equity ratio. The cost of borrowing lowered to 8.04% for the quarter versus 8.07% in Q4 of FY 2025. This again is despite increase in share of long-term borrowings. Our OpEx to average AUM stands at 4.8% as we continue to invest in new businesses and distribution.
In line with our growth strategy, during the quarter, we increased our employee base to 4,685 and expanded our branch network. Our pre-provision operating profit, the PPOP, during the quarter was INR 325 crores. As mentioned, the asset quality remained stable with gross NPA at 1.84% and the net NPA at 0.85%. The provisioning coverage ratio stood at 53.93%. Our profit after tax at INR 63 crores during the quarter as the company is making significant investments in new businesses, branches, AI, and technology. The debt-to-equity ratio stood at 3.72x , which gives us enough headroom for growth. The capital adequacy ratio continues to remain healthy and comfortably above the regulatory requirement at 20.55% for the quarter as of 30th of June, of which the Tier 1 capital is 19.02%. The liquidity coverage ratio stood healthy at 130% as of 30th of June 2025.
On the liquidity front, we remain comfortable with positive cumulative mismatch across all buckets and the surplus liquidity of INR 4,465 crores as of June 30th, 2025. Thank you for your patience. And now I would like to open the floor for question and answer session.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use their handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question comes from the line of Chintan Shah from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity and congrats on the quarter. So sir, firstly on our MSME book, so it is around one-third of the total book. So could you help me with the split into secured and unsecured for our MSME book with a 36% of the overall book? Yeah, so that was the first question.
Yeah, sure. So let's start. So you do ask me the MSME book, around 65%-70% of my business is mortgages, which is LAP, of which 75%-80% are all self-owned property. So to that extent, the LAP book is behaving extremely well for us. Overall, I think it was a 60. Sorry, I cut you. So it's secured, if you ask me, overall, it is around 63%-70% is what the range that I could give you.
But overall, MSME for us is going to be a very robust growth engine, and I see a great opportunity both on the business side as well as I don't see any concerns on the risk on the portfolio. Even our new calibrations and the way 30, 60, 90 is going, my assessment is it's a fantastic opportunity in terms of well-calibrated risk. And as a matter of fact, if you look at our NPA on that, it's fairly low right now, and it's not a small size. And we are very focused on it being very well-calibrated. We're not in any hurry. So we're following our philosophy that it should be good quality, and that's what we're doing. And so in our case, MSME, whether it's this or whether we double on this, the quality will be well-calibrated. You can be rest assured.
The GNPA on that is really low right now.
Sure, sure, and so on this 20% STPL book, entirely, is the STPL book in old or is it new? And so again, what time is it expected to run down, the old STPL book? By what time will it entirely run down?
Our STPL book, as I had said, it is around only 4%.
So he's talking about 4% of your old STPL. He wanted a breakdown, so the old STPL is around 4%. The rest of it, which you see, is new, well-calibrated, and there, it's almost really, really very good and solid business that we are growing in a conscious manner, and we see a huge upside there. That's what I said. In the whole construct, I deliberately had a very high proportion of secured businesses first, followed by unsecured businesses. That's the model.
So your old STPL is around 4% left. That's about it. Out of which also, I think you have a decent proportion at zero DPD and all that.
Absolutely.
So I'm just lastly on the capital raise. So now with this 300 promoter capital raise, so that would be it, or would we also be looking to do any second round of preference to take or any other capital being expected?
I couldn't understand your question. What was the question? Any further?
So on the capital.
The promoter has put in, we welcome it as confidence in growth capital. We've always maintained that external raise, we would want to look at anything in the range of debt to equity of around 4.75-5. That's what we have because I want the with our ROE projections, I want to look at healthy ROE as we proceed ahead three years down the line. I mean, that's the line of thinking.
Sure, sure. And so on a just steady-state basis, once the OpEx normalizes and credit costs, as you already mentioned, it would stabilize around 1.5% - 2% is what the guidance is. So any ballpark steady-state ROE, ROE which we could be looking at probably from two years down the line?
We always have very stretched internal targets, but let me stick to our guidance. Our guidance is June 20 28, we said 3%-3.5%. Internally, we always love to scramble to beat expectations as by now you've seen us over the last four quarters. So I'll leave it at that. I think we're always better to be conservative than overachieve. We like to do that if we can.
Sure, sure. I'll join back in the queue for follow-up questions. Yeah, thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Abhijit Tibrewal from Motilal Oswal Financial Services Limited. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you for taking my question. So one of the two things for me is NIMs for us continue to contract. So if you could just explain what is kind of resulting in this NIM contraction. And somewhere during your opening remarks, I also heard that we spoke about getting to steady-state margins of 9%. So by when can we kind of reach the 9% margins? And this margin compression that we have seen for the last few quarters, for how long is that going to sustain before we stabilize and the margin starts inching up towards 9%? That's my first question.
See, you've got to see the environment when you're building block, understand the philosophy. I've given a very clear guidance that within four quarters, we in our internal assessment see a 9%. And to give you guys a sense, the compression is because the old STPL book had to be reduced. We had to clean that up, and the new STPL book has started to rise. Our digital journey is on very healthy ROE. They have started to rise. But as they start rising every quarter, they will start adding positive value to the NIM. But the reason I've given you a four-quarter kind of outline is so that allows us to very sensibly build the model. I'm not so worried about NIMS. Please understand that as the company starts growing from here, we've launched multiple products. We'll have a substantially increased customer franchise.
So, as your cross-sell starts increasing next year from April onwards as well, you will get not only the unsecured piece sensibly well-calibrated rising. You'll also have your cross-sell piece rising, which, if you see in the first year operation, cross-sell is very, very low. And as the company starts expanding on its customer franchise, we come with very strong experiences there. We also have digital journeys, which are one of a kind in the industry. So both on new acquisition as well as cross-sell, we could make a significant progress. And both are extremely positive for the NIM in terms of a structural construct. But when you build a business, it's more important to build solid business first rather than NIMs first. That's important to understand as a philosophy because we've taken a position of risk first. This is what we are working right now.
But I've given you a clear visibility to NIMs, so I'm not too worried about NIMs, by the way.
So just to sum that up, sir, basically, it will take four quarters thereabouts, is it? So for the next few quarters, we might see a NIM compression before it stabilizes and then that.
See, hear me very clearly. I said 12 quarters you'll sorry, four quarters, which is 12 months, you'll hit approximate figure of nine. All right? So that's exactly what I'm saying. I'm not saying it's going to compress till then. That's your assumption, not mine.
You got it. This is clear now. Thank you so much.
The other thing is business is very important to bias towards solidity first. NIM is a much easier path from our perspective to achieve. Remember, we've launched two major digital journeys, STPL. We've recalibrated it.
Things are positive and on the rise here. So we've managed to get our cost down. We've got us secured up. And we wanted the risk calibration on unsecured to get a little more time, which is what it's done. So that it's more seasoned before we start scaling it up at a much decent rate. And that's what we're entering now. So things should only look up. But we've given you a broad guidance in terms of so that you have that clarity. Sorry, over to you. Next question. Yeah.
Not at all. This is useful. After the second thing was on credit costs while you guided for steady-state credit costs of 1.5%-2%. I mean, what we're seeing now remains significantly elevated. So what will trajectory be like, right? Again, like you explained, margins will get to 9% in the next four quarters, 12 months.
Likewise, if you could just give out the trajectory on credit costs as how they could trend over the next four quarters.
We have said what we had to say. By limited pointers, there are two figures we have done this time. One is an additional disclosure. So let me reiterate that for everybody's consumption. You have 3.14 or something, right? What was it earlier? That's gone down to 2.61 on an overall level. That's level one, 53 basis point reduction. That's not elevated if I see all the NBFCs, by the way, just for my academic knowledge. The second one is if I remove STPL from there, we've done an additional disclosure that 12 of my businesses, which is approximately 80% of 41, which might be what, 34,000 or 32, 33, whatever it is, that is a decently sized book, which is a credit cost of 1.43.
Even if it goes up by 10-20 basis points, hypothetically, on a quarter-quarter basis, or you even weighed that slightly, and in year on year, we've given a projection on both these figures will come down and noteworthy in the next two to three years. So this is important to absorb and understand what I'm saying. If you look at 12 businesses and you compare it with these are almost projections of 12 businesses out of my 30 businesses, which is very close to banking kind of NPL. I have not seen this in the NBFC world, by the way. So these are not significantly elevated anymore. These figures, please get these figures absolutely clear what I'm saying. These are precise disclosures, which should have no doubts what I'm talking. All right? Thanks.
Got it, sir. And then last question. As you know, new MSME has been in the fold since yesterday. So it could just help us understand.
I never acknowledge. That's your statement.
No, no, sir. All I'm kind of yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. But what I'm trying to understand is it could help us understand our MSME business a little better, right? Because I got a little confused when we said that only 60%-70% of our MSME is secured against property. I was under the impression our LAP book that we report separately, right? That is the loans that we give out against our property. So MSME, I mean, is it secured, unsecured? Just trying to understand that a little better. And also within MSME unsecured that we do, I'm assuming we also do business loans. So what kind of ticket size do we do in business loans? What's the usual turnover of the microenterprises that we cater to in our MSME?
So MSME for us, I think what Shriram was alluding to, and he can chip in if he likes, is 63% or whatever MSME we do happens to be secure. So that's point approximately ballpark what I heard him say. But more importantly, whether it's secured or it's unsecured, whether it's loans against property, whether it's business loans, or if there are any other versions, the ones MSME that we do, what I can assure you is it's extremely well calibrated on the risk side. Now, industry might going through its various I don't think there's anything too unusual about when I was handling a very large before my previous assignment, a very large portfolio as well. I think we've always had these situations of MSMEs always have to be very well risk calibrated.
I don't see any storm in the industry in my assessment. These storms have always existed if you don't calibrate it well. So to blame the industry is not something I see it that way. I see it that if you've got to be well risk calibrated, and the industry is what it was. I don't think there's a deterioration in the industry level. I've got a large enough size to comment on it. So I don't see it that way. And so that's what I'd like to share with you. As far as the book is concerned, it's behaving really well right now. So that's all I can share with you. Our new calibration will be extremely well calibrated because that's what we're here for. But I don't even think industry is at any concern level, to be honest with you.
If you don't calibrate yourself well, it's very easy to blame the industry. Yeah.
Sure, that's fair. That's fair. And thank you for the detailed explanation. That's all from my side. Congratulations. And best wishes to you too.
Thanks.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one. We take the next question from the line of Mohit Jain from Tara Capital Partners. Please go ahead.
Hello. Yeah, can you hear me, sir? Hello?
Yes, Mohit, please go ahead.
Yeah, I'm reading, sir. Sir, this is regarding the STPL portfolio. I guess it was 8% in last quarter, and right now I think it's down to 2%. And you have earlier said that 80% of this portfolio is well calibrated with zero DPD, and you don't expect any slippage from that. So for the remaining 20% of the portfolio, right now I think you have said that the figure for the STPL provision is INR 67 crores. That seems to be pretty high NPS you're having in that portfolio. Can you just clarify on this one, sir?
If you look at even the balance book, as I said, yeah, we have a substantial amount as I last time disclosed. It's a zero DPD book. Second is we are carrying sufficient provisioning. Okay? So to that extent, I don't see any kind of an issue out there. Second is from a collection efficiency standpoint, we have significantly improved our collection efficiency. So with a 4% with a zero DPD book, which is substantial enough, and we have a sufficient provisioning around it, I don't see any issue. And if you ask me, the problem actually doesn't exist now anymore.
This is just over the next seven to eight months; it may kind of run off, and we have sufficient provisioning around that.
Oh, it looks like it has no provisioning yet, okay.
No, no, sir. Just to clarify, sir, just to reframe the question. So right now, the STPL book, the old STPL, is around 1,700 crores, like 4% roughly, and if you're saying like 80% is well provisioned, so the remaining 20% is around 500-600 crores, on which we already have a quarterly provision of 60-70 crores, so that number seems to be very high from a layman's side. So is it fair to say that 80% of the book is completely clean and the 20% is almost going to be a write-off of part of a book, which gradually we don't expect much recovery there?
To be honest, better to be conservative on that, and we like to believe the same. But it's better to be watchful till it's gone. All right?
Okay.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Kaitav Shah from Anand Rathi. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good evening, sir. Just one question on the MSME book. In terms of credit underwriting, we have always hopped on stronger credit underwriting. If you can tell us more about the book in terms of leverage, financial leverage of your customers, what proportion of the book would be more than three or four lenders, something like that, at least at the start of it?
Kaitav, this is Shriram here . In fact, that's a great question, and I kind of you actually answered my point. The biggest challenge today in the MSME book was the leverage part of it.
That's where we looked at the number of inquiries in those set of customers. The inquiries are more than two to three even inquiries. Forget about even having being a third or the fourth lender. We don't even look at those kind of transactions. That's one of our gatekeeping criteria, and that's one of the reasons that our MSME book is fully under control.
Yeah. That's a good question. Actually, the answers were probably maybe we should have answered in the first time. It's a good question. That's why you see that our quality of the book always remains a little more risk calibrated. Because some of these things, we don't get very tempted to kind of walk something which we're not very comfortable with. Sure.
Thank you. I think that was my only question.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Sanjay Chawla from Renaissance Investment Managers. Please go ahead.
Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity. So my question is, you mentioned that existing STPL on your core book, the existing STPL credit cost of 1.43%. Can you give a sense of what has been your credit cost experience on the new STPL book so far, especially in this quarter?
So on the new STPL book, I can say that my cheque bounces have come down significantly by around 70%. And my collection efficiency has significantly improved by 40%. We are still at a building block stage. The seasoning of those loans are yet to be seen. But by the cheque bounces being down by 70%, itself gives us it's a very encouraging result for us, and we don't see any challenge in terms of portfolio quality on that book.
As a matter of fact, after adequately seasoning and waiting for it patiently, last quarter, we've started scaling it up, and that's why I wanted the secured books to be of a certain size before we start scaling it up. I think we are very excited about it, as a matter of fact, if I can use that word, because it's very decently well calibrated,
And if you were to give a sense, in a quantitative sense.
Your query is breaking. You're not able to.
Sanjay, I apologize to interrupt you there, but your audio is not coming through.
Am I audible now?
We can hear you now.
So my question was, to quantify it, the credit cost on your new STPL book, would it be higher than the blended 2.61% this quarter?
Yeah, because the high ROA and high, that's a different one.
That's why I've given you details of if I give you the rest of the book at 1.43 and I give you this at 2.61, that answers your question, my friend. That's a very different business. That's the reason I've said all other businesses being in a certain price range, we singled out one business. I've not singled out consumer durable. We've kept it as part of the regular retail chain. But all regular consumer businesses of 12, we've just put it together as an additional disclosure to give exactly the sense which you're asking.
Yeah, yeah. Got it. So the other question is, what kind of burden do you have on the OpEx increase now, having completed one quarter for the rest of the year?
We expect that our OpEx as a percentage way will go up. It hasn't gone up, by the way.
So we've done some bit of hard work. But I think when you increase 80 branches, you increase around 1,000 + people. We're building that up. While on one side, we're working a lot on AI projects. A lot of them will get commissioned in the third quarter end. A lot of efficiencies will start building in the quarter four, which will obviously have annualized impacts. So plus, we have aggressive plans on growth as well because our risk calibration is looking pretty good. Imagine 12 businesses at 1.43 is almost like banking level there. This is not what I get to see in the NBFC world. So I think we'll keep our options open. What's the best optimization? I've given you enough guidances to get a sense, but I think we are in full control of the ship now.
This looks like from here on, things look on a very good note, but we will obviously it is a finance business, so we always have to keep ourselves grounded.
Okay. Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. We take the next question from the line of Nischint Chawathe from Kotak Institutional Equities. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Two questions, actually. If you could give some colour in terms of the segmental yield for at least the key lines of businesses. And the other thing is some sense in terms of sourcing mix that you're looking at versus which is basically broken up into in-house versus a third-party sort of a distributor, either digital or physical.
The bias is all our businesses have been designed keeping in mind 3%-3.5% ROAs.
Now, I don't think on an earnings call, I can summarize all yields, but these are obviously healthy yields. You know our cost of borrowing. My OpEx cost, you know if I have to make it three, 3.5, all six businesses that I have launched with a bias towards healthy ROAs because that's what we've given a commitment we want to reach or exceed, whatever. So with that, we also have STPL that we have managed to reduce our balance rate, get the thing recalibrated. We have a lot of digital journeys that we even run on higher pricing than regular businesses that we run for price for convenience, whether it's personal loans, and we are surprised positively to see that our daily run rates seem moving on a healthy level at very decently high yields. Some of them are even at a 4% ROAs.
I think that's how I normally like to answer these questions instead of giving our competing strengths sort of what pricing each business I do. But it's all healthy pricing. We're in the business to make money. So we're very clear, risk-calibrated, and we want to make money on this. So this has to be on healthy ROAs, which is why you see some of the businesses which have low ROAs are not launched for me. Because they're much easier to do.
Essentially, 5% pre-tax ROAs is what you're looking at.
I mean, we have given a post-tax kind of guidance of 3%-3.5%. I'll probably maintain that at the right time. So we've gone with that. Most of the guidance is 30%-35%. We kind of exceeded that. We said, "Second year, 35%-40%." We've given you a guidance that we launched better.
Our risk cost has come down. We've given you an additional disclosure on credit basis. Investors have been asking. You needed better. It was a fair point. I've given you 12% with none of the NBFCs I have right now. And this is a INR 35,000, INR 33,000 odd book, which is not like some INR 8,000-crore book. So I think it's good enough on the table for you to do the math and figure out what's the post-tax ROA pre-tax. So allow me to stick to the guidance we've so far given here. Because I think quite a bit before I take any different line. That's the reason I stick to what I said. Yeah.
Yeah. Fair. And if you could give some colour on sourcing in terms of how much of it could be in-house versus which could be where you could use some channel partners. That's fine.
It must have been a little complex, but I'll give you a sense. I covered something called digital marketing. The reason I covered that was to give you guys a sense. While it sounded a little complex or it sounded theoretical, the real reality is between Meta, Google, and a whole lot of other channels that we are activating, this company never had direct digital business or PL Prime or business loans coming and closing end-to-end digitally. To create that market is what we are working on. And as you create the first level, the second level becomes much lower cost every year because the cross-sell goes up. The net impact starts getting positive and positive. So what happens? The company acquires 100 customers the next year. 30% of them come in as cross-sell. And your overall cost starts actually becoming extremely advantageous.
So if you see the whole model is fairly thought through. My sourcing is through DSAs. My sourcing is creating two industry-first digital journeys, which we are very proud of both for business loans as well as white-collar personal loans. We're going to price for convenience, and we have made it successful in the personal loan side already, by the way. We haven't disclosed the daily run rate, but it's on a healthy level already. And that, the beauty is that keeps increasing. Even every two weeks, we find that level is going up. Because that's how the word of mouth and that spread. So we are investing a fair amount of time and effort to develop that ecosystem. I think that will also give us a cutting edge in terms of first right to refusal. Look at it simplistically. Imagine a fintech who's giving business to your top banks today.
Why shouldn't he embed my journey and give me the business that we approve at my pricing? He doesn't have to do anything, but there's a huge amount of customers who want the loans at 5:00 A.M. and 11:00 P.M. or 11:30 P.M. sitting in their house. They don't mind if the EMIs are what they can afford, and if the profiles are right, convenience, pricing for convenience is a very dumb thing in the world, and we get the good customers. We get the first right to refuse, so you have digital journeys sizing up in a big way. You've got physical journeys. Also, we are investing. For example, on one side, they're coming up with industry-first digital journeys. On the other side, I've said 400 gold branches. Why?
Because if we had a break even in 13 months, and my guys tell me we could be breaking even 11 months hypothetically or earlier, let's see how it goes quarter to quarter. It could be early to come in. But let's say then you can size up both opportunities. I mean, in a seasoned state, gold could be a 4% ROA business. Why shouldn't we set that up? So we are here to make money in terms of professionally on the company. It's very important that we build both on the franchise of physical and digital as long as it makes good ROAs. And like I said, we will raise external capital at 4.75-5. And with our ROA projections, why shouldn't we aspire for a 20% ROA in the third quarter year?
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we take that as the last question and conclude the question and answer session. I now hand the contents over to the management for their closing comments.
From here and thank you so much for such a large audience showing interest. We truly owe it. Thank you so much.
Thank you. On behalf of Poonawalla Fincorp Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your line.