CitiFinancial, Citibank India's non-banking finance arm, has reduced its asset book by one-third and its branch network by a quarter of the year-ago level as part of a restructuring exercise, Citi CEO for South Asia Mark T Robinson told Business Standard.
A career Citibanker, 'Selva' came into the spotlight as the person who rewired the financial behemoth's Indian retail operations.
The exit of the big movers has meant more opportunities for local players such as Nambiar Finance, which is just one of the 1,465 non-deposit-taking NBFCs registered with the Mumbai office of the Reserve Bank of India.
Days after Citi's global CEO Vikram Pandit said the group planned to reduce head-count by 52,000, there are reports that the financial major will lay off over 1,000 employees in India. The financial services company has around 10,000 employees in India.
More and more banks are sensing big opportunity in the high-margin, small consumer loans business.
The sub-prime loss-hit Citigroup is on a cost-cutting exercise in its Indian operations. CitiFinancial, its consumer finance unit, which is also reeling under the burden of rising bad loans, is considering closing about 100 of its 450 branches in India.
Banks are shying away from the unsecured lending market, thanks to the rising instances of defaults and recovery woes.The rate of growth in the personal loan portfolio of banks has dipped to 13.2 per cent to Rs 58,669 crore (Rs 586.69 billion) as on February 15, 2008, compared with 30.6 per cent in the same period last year, said the Reserve Bank of India in its 2007-08 report on Macroeconomic and Monetary Developments.
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