Manappuram Finance to focus on MSME sector

Chennai : Manappuram Finance Ltd, a listed non-banking finance company and a major in lending against gold, will diversify its business portfolio and focus on the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) sector, a top company official said here on Friday.

"We want to be an active player in the MSME sector. We are diversifying our business portfolio by lending to MSME, small home loans, vehicle financing," Managing Director and CEO V.P. Nandakumar said.

Queried about the asset-liability match following the business diversification, he said a major portion of business will be financing against gold and the company has more than sufficient capital adequacy ratio.

According to Nandakumar, the company's assets under management (AUM) is about Rs 17,000 crore and nearly 75 per cent of that is the gold loan portfolio.

He said the company lends about 67 per cent of gold value and already nearly one-third of the gold value is with the company as security.

Manappuram Finance has come out with an issue secured non-convertible debenture with varying interest rates depending on the instrument's maturity.

The base issue size of the Tranche-1 issue of Rs 200 crore, with an option to retain oversubscription up to Rs 800 crore.

The face value of the debenture is Rs 1,000 and the minimum application amount is Rs 10,000.

The issue opened on October 24, 2018, and would close on November 22, 2018.