Ladies and gentlemen, good evening and welcome to the Muthoot Finance Limited Q2 FY 2025 earnings conference call, hosted by Nirmal Bang Equities Private Limited. As a reminder, all participants' lines will be in 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 an 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 Ms. Rati Pandit from Nirmal Bang Equities Private Limited. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am. Thank you, Rati. A very good evening to everyone. On behalf of Nirmal Bang Equities, we welcome you all to the Q2 FY25 earnings conference call of Muthoot Finance Limited. We are pleased to host the management, sorry, we are pleased to host the senior management of the company, represented by Mr. George Alexander Muthoot, Managing Director, Mr. Alexander George, Whole-Time Director, Mr. George M. Alexander, Whole-Time Director, Mr. George M. George, Whole-Time Director, Mr. George M. Jacob, Whole-Time Director, Mr. Eapen Alexander, Executive Director, Mr. K. R. Bijimon, Executive Director, and Mr. Oommen K. Mammen, Chief Financial Officer. I now hand over the call to MD, Sir, Mr. George Alexander Muthoot, for his opening remarks, post which we can have the floor open for Q&A. Thank you, and over to you, sir. Good evening to all of you. I'm George Alexander Muthoot, Managing Director. I have with me the senior team of Muthoot Finance because we just had a board meeting. Everybody is around, so once again, good evening to all of you. Actually, we are pleased to announce that we have achieved the exceptional financial results for the first year of 2025. Our standalone assets under management have reached INR 90,000 crores, and our consolidated AUM has crossed INR 1 lakh crores. We feel at Muthoot, we are proud that we have crossed the INR 1 lakh crore consolidated AUM mark, and definitely, we are happy with that. The standalone assets under management itself has grown to 90,197, driven by a robust 28% year-on-year growth on our core gold loan portfolio. Our standalone profit after tax grew by 18% year-on-year and now stands at 2,330 for this half-year. This half-year, we also saw the highest-ever gold loan disbursements to new customers of INR 10,687 crores, adding to 996,000 new customers. Among the peer NBFC group, we have the highest average gold loan AUM per branch of INR 17.75 crores. During this half-year, our gold loan portfolio grew by 18% to 13,285. On the back of these achievements, we wish to revise our earlier guidance for the financial year 2025 on gold loan growth from the earlier committed 15% to 25% +. We are also encouraged by the progress in our non-gold loan portfolio, with noticeable growth across the personal loans, home loans, and strengthening our position as a diversified financial services conglomerate. Our branch network stands at 400 for standalone Muthoot Finance. The branch network stands at 4,855. The gold loan outstanding standalone stands at 86,164, and the credit losses are 28.84 crores, and the percentage of credit loss on the gross loan assets under management is 0.03%. As I said earlier, the average gold loan per branch is 17.75 crores, and the number of loan accounts is 97 lakhs. The total weight of gold jewelry is 199 tons, and the average ticket size has moved from 79,000 to 88,000, and the number of employees is almost the same, 28,000 to 28,500. The return on average assets has moved up from last quarter of 5.39 to 5.74, and the return on average equity has also moved up from 17.7 to 19.9. The other subsidiaries have also done well. Muthoot Homefin. The Belstar Microfinance has seen an increase in the loan AUM at 22% year-on-year at INR 9,625 crores and increased the total revenue 47% year-on-year to INR 1,165 crores, and the increase in profit after tax year-on-year to INR 142 crores. Muthoot Homefin also increased its loan AUM and 55% growth year-on-year and now stands at INR 2,441 crores. There is also an increase in the loan disbursement of 90% year-on-year at INR 539 crores, and the profit after tax has increased to INR 17 crores. Muthoot Money has seen an increase in the loan AUM. There's a year-on-year increase of INR 2,265 crores and an increase in the total revenue to INR 146 crores. Asia Asset Finance, the presence of the loan at Sri Lanka, has increased the net profit after tax year-on-year at LKR 30 crores, and the branch network has increased now to 91 branches. The other subsidiaries, the insurance subsidiary etc., have done well, and overall, we feel that the environment is conducive for gold loan growth, and we have been able to take advantage of that, and that is what you see in the present scenario. So with that, I would conclude my opening remarks and leave the floor open for questions and answers 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 touch-tone 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. The first question is from the line of Raghav Garg from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead. Sir, hi. Good evening. Thanks for the opportunity. I just wanted to ask what is the auction number for this quarter and if you can also tell the auction number for the first half. Yeah. Auction for this quarter is INR 250 crores, and first half it is. Sir, I think you would have mentioned it in the last call. If okay, I can pick it up from. No. First quarter, it is INR 69 crores. This quarter, it is INR 250 crores. So total put together, it will be around INR 320 crores. What was it in the same period last year? I'm just trying to get a sense or an understanding of how much it has gone up versus last year. Compared to last year. Last year, it is definitely much lower. The options are much lower. If you look at the numbers, maybe get back after a while. Sure. My next question is, I also wanted to understand your auction policy in the sense that how much time do you typically allow this NPA customer for repayment before you auction off their gold? My understanding is that you allow a substantial amount of time, but if you can give some numbers around that, what is your stated policy? That will be useful. The stated policy is help the customer. That is our stated policy. Try not to auction the gold to the customer. That is our stated policy so that customer is not unhappy by having to forgo his valuable precious ornaments. So what we look at is when customers come to our branch, ask or request our branch managers for more time when the period has gone across the threshold limit of time, they ask us for more time. And if the branch feels that he's a genuine customer and there is a chance of him releasing the gold after a while, then he gets a request from the customer, and on that basis, we rather grant him more time. And that is how the position works. And also, it is to be ensured that we are in the money. So if you are in the money and the customer is seeking for time, we don't mind giving him time to repay the loan. And that has always helped us in having more customers having high regard for Muthoot because their gold is not auctioned very quickly. So that's looking at about 347 crores. Almost similar. Okay. Sir, just on the auction policy in terms of the timeline, would you say, I mean, do you end up allowing, say, about six months, nine months, one year? See, the reason I'm asking is that you would be accruing overdue interest on the balance outstanding. Is that understanding correct? It's not the time bound. We look at whether if you are in the money and the customer is genuine, we give him time. Whether it is three months, six months, or nine months is immaterial in that respect. Sir, the point that I was trying to understand is that, like I said, that you would be accruing interest. You also mentioned that you need to be in the money, but does it so happen that the outstanding principal and the overdue both cumulative, they become more than 75% of the collateral that's available to you, in which case there would be a breach of regulatory norms, or how do you deal with such situations? Our regulatory requirement is 75% LTV at the time of origination. We are complying to the LTV regulations. Beyond that, what we look at is the 12-month period. Normally, we do auctions after 12 months, but because the gold price has gone up and because sometimes customers pay interest even before the contractual due date, and we are in the money and customer is unable to pay the principal amount, we give some time provided the customer makes a request. In case there is a customer request like that, we hold on to the ornament. We try to avoid auction because if we auction it, customer loses the ornament, and it is a destruction of value for the customer. He'll really get upset and we simply auction the ornament and try to refund a small portion of the surplus we receive because for him, his actual investment is lost because he's almost investing another 20%-25% in terms of the making charges or the stones in there. If there is a consent on the borrower, we give him more time so that he's able to retrieve the ornament. Because during that time, suddenly interest would be accruing. Sir, what is the interest accrued outstanding on the balance sheet as of September? Around INR 1,700 crores. Okay. Mr. Raghav, that's all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm good. 1,740 crores. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mahrukh f rom Nuvama Wealth Management, please go ahead. Yeah. Good evening, sir. Congratulations. Sir, I had a few questions. Firstly, that now that one competitor is back, have you seen any changes in your business or in your flows in the recent past? So that's my first question. And secondly, it was possibly something similar was asked in the previous question also, that if your LTV goes above the regulatory limit during the course of the loan, what do you do? You said four questions? Or a few? Few questions, I said. Not four, sir. So let's make that two now for now. So actually, if you don't look at any competition in particular, there will be competition in only businesses where there is potential. Where whichever business has potential for growth, there is a lot of competition, whether one person or two persons. So that is there. We have been seeing a lot of competitors doing the same thing, similar things, but this is nothing new to us. Competitor may come, competitor may go, but our business will go along well. The second question is about LTV. I think it's the Oommen that has answered this question correctly because it is the time of giving the loan, the 75% is there. And afterwards, when the interest etc. accrues and the time has elapsed and it is again repeating the same thing which Oommen said. Okay, sir. And is there any way to find out how much of your customers would also have MFI loans? We haven't tried that. It may be possible, but we have not tried, sir. Okay, sir. Thank you so much. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Shreepal Doshi from Equirus Securities. Please go ahead. Hi, sir. Congrats on a good set of quarters. Sir, my questions were pertaining to LTV norms, other evidence. So as per the new regulation, would we be required to maintain the 75% LTV throughout the loan tenure, or will it be only applicable at the time of origination? What is the new regulation? Sir, RBI recently had come out and said that you need to follow this set of rules which were already prevailing. So there is this so just wanted that clarity that is it 75% at the time of origination or 75% throughout the loan tenure? So as far as we are concerned, there's no change in regulation as far as LTV norms is concerned. Okay. And then the second part was on the auto renewal. So for our existing customers, at the time of maturity of the loan, we have, I think, as a policy, we auto renew the loan. So on that front also, would there be any regulatory change? So there is no auto renewal on the loans. No, no. We don't do that. The customer has to sign the document. We don't do any auto renewal of loans. Probably it has been done by somebody else, but not Muthoot. Okay. Got it. And just one last question in line with the earlier participant. So since now the landscape becomes again competitive, and in the last six months, we had tweaked our pricing as well as offer rates. So would we continue with our strategy on pricing, or would we relook at it on making it more competitive? What is the competition? We didn't understand what happened to the competition. Pricing and competition. We didn't understand that. Sir, I'm just saying that in the last six months, we had rolled back some of our offer rates as well as have also taken some price hikes. So would we continue to stick to that, or would we look to revisit it? Because now one of the larger players is back in the landscape, and they might deploy pricing-related strategy. I don't know whether we have made any changes based on some competition. I don't think we. In the last six months, I don't think pricing changes is something quite normal in our system and different places, different schemes. It is quite normal. We have not done any specific changes in the last six months. Probably we would have changed some of the pricing based on the increase in the cost of borrowing, but we're not active with anything. Got it. And incrementally, you also will stick to that thought process? The pricing is depending on the cost of funding. If the cost of funding goes up, we will increase our rate. If the cost of funding is coming down, we reduce our rate. Got it, sir. Got it. Thank you, sir. Good luck for the next quarter, sir. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Abhijit Tibrewal from Motilal Oswal Financial Services. Please go ahead. Yeah. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. Sir, first of all, congratulations on a strong quarter. I also had a few questions that I wanted to ask. Sir, first things first, I mean, on 30th September, as you recall, RBI had come out with a circular on gold loans. So just trying to understand, are there any items from that circular which were relevant for us and where you're working with the regulator on some of those items? Yeah, yeah. We have gone through the regulations, the 11 suggestions they have given for gold loan companies, how to do business, etc. Generally, it's for all the gold loan companies who are doing business, and for those who are not taking up some practices, they are supposed to do that. And we have discussed that, and we have discussed with the regulator. Got it. Okay, sir. So secondly, just trying to understand earlier on the fifth, one of your gold loan peers had reported their results, and they had also shared in their earnings call that this week you had a meeting of your Gold Lending Association with the regulator where you were planning to discuss some of the open items from that circular. So has that meeting happened? And any takeaways from that meeting in terms of clarifications from the regulator? I don't think any such meeting has taken place, and I don't know. I'm not aware of such meetings. Got it. And sir, lastly, just trying to understand, while you have already said that, I mean, competition will be there in businesses where there's potential for growth. I just want to understand, I mean, then kind of tell me infer that there has not been any significant change in the competitive intensity in the last two months. And sir, one question for Oommen Mammen. I think we went for auctions. So, I mean, how are we thinking about our NPAs are going up indeed because we are giving more time to customers to come back, repay, and take their gold? I mean, are there any covenants in place based on which you take these calls? I think we explained that in detail in the first call. The first analyst who asked us, we explained in detail that we give more time to the customer if they request that provided we are in the money, and we have paid some interest, and he is a genuine customer. Genuinely, he wants to take. We give him more time. So sometimes the NPA numbers go up. Last time, it was 3.98. Today, it is 4.3. But since we are in the money and we are not losing any money on that, we are not very much concerned with that. And of course, we will try our best to ask the customers to pay the interest and renew the loan. That is definitely will be our side. We'll ask them to pay the interest and maybe close the loan and take a new loan or something like that. We constantly try to do so that we can keep the NPA numbers also reasonable. Got it. Okay. This is useful, sir. Thank you so much, and Oommen Mammen, sir, I mean, how are we thinking about our cost of borrowing trajectory now? See, I think for Q2, I think the cost of borrowing is around 9%. I think it will more or less remain in that level because I think we have already reached the peak, and there is a lot of talk about further reduction. So I think we have already reached that peak level. I think we should see that coming down as the benchmark rates are reduced. Oommen Mammen, when you said we, it is not Muthoot. It is the market. When the benchmark rates are reduced, we will see a reduction in the borrowing cost. Got it. This is very, very useful. Thank you so much, and all the very best to you and your team. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Digant. From GreenEdge Wealth Services, please go ahead. Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my question, and congratulations to everyone for this spectacular result, and sir, this comes at a time when regulator is holding one or the other banks every day or every month. So congratulations on that. The first question is actually not on gold loans. On gold loans, we have seen you for maybe 15 years, and competition came, they disrupted, then they again withdrew. We have done very well on gold loans, but sir, even today, after 10 years of diversification, 8% of our profits or maybe even lesser comes from the non-gold business, so if I were to think of next, say, next five, seven years, which will be our one more shining example like gold loans? Will it again be gold loans after seven years, or some other product will get that push? Any thoughts on this, sir? Because as of now, we have gold loans where we are good at, and we have a good portfolio on that, and we see great potential there. Of course, we will keep trying new, new businesses. We will try our best to actually what we try is trying to give non-gold loans to our gold loan customers if possible because we see these people borrowing home loans and vehicle finance and personal finance and LAP, etc., from elsewhere. We are trying to see whether we can give that to our customers. But of course, not very easy, and we are in the process of building that only. But our main focus always would be on the gold loans where we are quite good at, I think. Yes, sir. Not a question of number one product. I'm talking about the number two. Number one, I know that it will always be gold loans. Number two, to me, if you ask number two, it will be the home loans, sir. Number two, it will be the home loans. Okay, sir. Thank you for that. Sir, second question is, in general, for the first time, I'm seeing that RBI is more and more holding the banks and less in NBFCs. I have not seen this in 15 years of my career, but that's happening now. So we have seen some yield improvement also after a pretty long time. So this whole competitive intensity, has it reduced? It's the same, or what do you expect in the next six months? See, our yields have always been reasonable. Though our maximum rate will be 24%, the average yield is around less than 18%. So I think we are very reasonable because of the rebate scheme. We are offering a better yield to the customers based on his repayment. So we are very reasonable in terms of the lending product. I don't think we are charging anything more if that was our. No, no, no. Oommen Mammen, that was not the question. The question was that before three, six months in market, there were a lot of products giving loans at 9%, 10%. We just don't see those 9, 10%, extremely low yielding products that I think have gone out, and maybe that would have contributed a little bit in improvement. Is that so? Yeah. You're right. Especially there was some aggressive pricing by banks, etc. At that point of time, everybody tried to reduce the rate because we knew that those rates are not sustainable, which has pulled down the average yield. But now those things are not there. So we are not offering those low yielding schemes. You remember the teaser rate. I think you might be asking about the teaser rate. Now it's not required to be offered. Correct. Correct. Correct. No, no. Thanks. Thanks. And then the last question is that I also read that a lot of these banks, especially in South India, they have done a lot of mischief in the PSL classification, the Priority Sector Lending classification. So can that become an opportunity for us if those loans are not classified as gold loans and eventually those customers come to us, or no? That is not a market because we are mostly urban. So I would assume that will not be a market for us. But any thoughts on this particular thing? Yeah. We have seen some banks try to do that, but of course, we don't know what to do on that sometimes, but then we seem to be just part of the business. That's all. Right. All right. Thank you so much for your time, and wish you all the best. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to address questions from all the participants, please limit your question to two per participant. If you have a follow-up question, I would request you to rejoin the queue. The next question is from the line of Parag Thakkar from Anvil Wealth Management. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi there. Thanks a lot, and congratulations for excellent numbers. I just wanted to ask that when you said, first of all, you have revised your guidance upwards from 15% to 25%, right? So I would like to ask, see driving factor for that. That is my first question. And second question is from a regulatory perspective, when you say that you accommodate customer, which is right in your business, that you will try your level best that customer will not lose his gold jewelry. But from RBI perspective and from the NPA provisioning perspective, whether your credit costs will go up because of that, because now the regulator is very, very, I would say, compliant, and it forces you to be compliant. Right? Up till now, you were accommodating your customer by not selling his ornaments. But is it possible to keep your credit costs as low as it was in the past after this regulatory overhang which has come? Sir, talking about the credit loss by keeping these loans in the non-auction, I said earlier also, we are in the money. So we'll get back our money, if not today, after two months or three months or six months. So we're not in the loss. The credit costs will not go up, sir. Only thing provisioning may be there. For that, I think we have some cushion for provisioning. Sir, just a reason for increasing your guidance from 15% to 25%? Yeah, because already we are past 18% growth, so I cannot now come and say only 15% growth, so I think we are seeing some good economic indicators, etc. Of course, the personal loan sector, the other credits, etc., are getting a little more difficult for people that we are also reading in the papers that personal loan, unsecured loans, etc., is getting difficult. Some of the NBFCs who are doing these fintech loans, etc., are not doing business, etc., so people need money, and I feel that Muthoot and the other gold loan companies are doing a good service to the society by giving credit to people when other it's almost something like which happened during the COVID. During the COVID time, people were not prepared, or institutions, banks, and NBFCs were not prepared to give loans for unsecured loans, etc. At that time, Muthoot was there. We did good business. We did good growth. Not only our growth, we did a lot of hand holding service, so today, I think we feel that we are doing good service to the people by being able to give them money with the collateral they are giving us so that their needs can be met, and at the time when they are not able to easily get unsecured loans as they were before, definitely, there are people finding it a little difficult to get unsecured loans, not from banks alone, even from NBFCs. As I said, these fintechs also have almost stopped, maybe. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Shubhranshu Mishra from PhillipCapital. Please go ahead. Hi. Good evening, sir. Thank you for the opportunity and belated wishes for Oommen Mammen this year. The first question is around the productivity that we have per branch. Now it's increased to roughly around INR 17 crores per branch. The branch would have a particular capacity for gold storage, a basis which we can derive the productivity. So what is the maximum capacity at a branch which we can derive in terms of storage and productivity? Also, when we have changed our guidance to 25%, that's great. But then how do we decompose this growth number of 25%? How much would be the value growth? How much would be the volume growth? Which geographies would be far more productive than South India, if you can give some bit of decomposition and flavor to the growth? And the last question is a data keeping question. If you can give out the mix of proportion of the AUM of less than one lakh, one to three lakh, and more than three lakh? Thanks. Thank you. I think you have a right question when you say our average business of 17 crores, etc. We have branches with maybe 10 crores, 12 crores, 17 crores, 25 crores, 30 crores, and 40, 50 crores also. So it only means that a branch can take 30, 40 crores also. That's almost double of what you are having now. So to answer that question, there's nothing like a storage capacity in a branch which is almost always the same. It is about the store rooms are quite large to accommodate money, accommodate gold. So in that respect, there is no end. Our evidence also shows that there are branches with 25 crores and 30 crores, etc., and 35 crores also branches are there. So we can easily double our business with the existing branch itself. The second question was about. Yeah. That I'll come back later, Shubhranshu. Sure, sir. Okay. Mr. Shubhranshu, does that answer your question? There's one more question, I think, which I asked which is pending. Please go ahead. So, the growth decomposition, so what is the value volume? Thank you, sir. Remind me. Thank you. We see growth from every aspect. It's not that it's growing in some geography, etc. We see, as I was saying earlier, we feel that there is more than an opportunity. We feel that we are serving people by being able to give loans. So there is demand coming from all over the country, everywhere. It's not restricted to northeast, west, etc. It's from everywhere, there is a good demand for gold loan business now. What is the value volume split of this growth, sir? Tonnage growth versus the? I think our tonnage is, I think, 299. How much will it grow by in that 25%? I don't give a guidance on tonnage. How can we give guidance on tonnage, sir? Okay. Sure, sir. I'll come back. I'll take this offline. Sure. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mona from Dolat Capital. Please go ahead. Mona. Hello. Yes, ma'am. Hello. Yeah. Hi, sir. Good evening. You're there. Yeah. Yeah. My question was on the standalone book. So I understand that apart from gold, there is a 4%-5% of SME and PL book as well as part of the standalone book. So what would be the NPA there if I could understand this quarter versus last quarter? Yeah. I'll come back on that. Okay. And just on the gold loan NPAs as well, I understand you've given a lot of clarity. But if I look at the NPA ratios in the last few quarters, they've been a lot higher than what we've seen historically. Though I understand the credit rates are very low. So I'm just trying to understand if some of this rise is coming from the non-gold portfolio or is it something that has changed which is leading to higher NPAs on the ground? Just if you could give some color there. So last quarter, gold loan NPA was INR 3,262 crores. This has increased to INR 3,686 crores. So that increase is about around 400 crores plus. That is the primary reason for growth in NPA. On the non-gold in the standalone, last quarter it was 90 crores. This quarter, it is 193 crores. So 100 crores increase in the NPA book of the non-gold in the standalone, which is almost 100% provided for. Got it, and any particular reason why? So I understand a lot of the rise in NPA ratio for standalone book is coming from gold, but any particular reason why the ratios are much higher than what we have seen historically? Historically, if I see sub 3.5%, and today it's been close to 4% over the last couple of quarters, so any color there if you could highlight? See, historically, our peak NPA, I think it was almost 6% plus. That was the highest we have seen in gold loan book. Right now, it is 4.3%. We have to explain the reason why we are keeping these accounts in our books, even though it is an NPA, just to accommodate the customers because one, there is a request from the customer. Second, there is adequate collateral available, and we are in the money. And we are doing a great help to the customers if we avoid auctions and provide them more time so that they can retrieve their ornaments. See, on the NPA book, the LTV is around 55% on the principal value. So you can imagine what customer is going to lose if we auction it. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rajiv Mehta from YES Securities. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. Good evening. Congrats on strong numbers. Sir, I heard your comments and replies on various regulatory risk-related questions. So we don't perceive any overhang or risk to any of our practices on the ground. That's the current reading we have. Overhang on what? No. I'm saying I heard your comments and replies on various regulatory risk-related questions, and so it seems that we don't perceive any overhang or risk to any of our practices on the ground at this point in time. Yeah. That's always our desire and our hope also. So I think we should have a positive attitude on that, sir. Okay. And sir, there's been significant uptake in new customer acquisition in the past two quarters. Would this hold up and why? Yeah. We did quite a bit of marketing and marketing activities. What should I say? We also beefed up our call centers. We beefed up our other online platforms, etc., and we are getting newer and newer customers today. That's definitely. We are actually engaged a few big agencies also for that. Just last thing on the second half, you require your gold loan portfolio to grow by 6-7% based on your guidance. Sir, this assumes what level of gold price? Because since there is a sharp correction in the gold price, it can lower our incremental growth. It can also trigger a lot of auctions. What have you assumed in terms of gold price for this guidance? So on gold price, actually, we don't assume anything, and we don't do any guidance based on gold price. But of course, gold price can be a factor, but it is not a significant factor. See, last one week after U.S. elections, the gold price has come down. Probably after some time, it will again go up. So we're not very much concerned with that because more so because our new incremental loans are based on the current gold price. So the price is falling. Our new loans will be priced at a lower LTV. So that is something which we all know for the past several years. So we don't think we have not based any calculations on gold price, etc. But otherwise, we see good uptake. I said earlier also, non-gold loans or unsecured loans are a bit difficult these days in the last two, three months. And that is definitely. We are doing it. Although it is an opportunity for gold loan business, we see it as a service which we are giving to the people, rather helping them in time of need when they really need money. And it is not forthcoming from unsecured area. So we are definitely helping them out. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Bhavik Dave from Nippon India Mutual Fund. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. Good evening, sir. Thank you for the opportunity. Hope I'm audible. We can't hear you, sir. We can't hear you. Sir, I would request you to please use your handset. Yeah. Am I audible now? Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. So sir, two, three questions. One is on the gold loan itself. Just wanted to understand after our competitor coming back into the market, have we seen any increase in attrition on the ground in our branches? Because they would have maybe gotten aggressive, and there was a case earlier where the attrition levels were quite high for other players. They were taking away people. How is the attrition rate at the branches of gold loans? Yeah. I think we have quite a 25,000 number of employees in this branch, gold loan branch itself, and there's always a pipeline. Some people come, some people go, so to answer your question, we have not seen any significant attrition, etc. Sure. Sure. And how would that number be? What is the kind of attrition rate that we see on the ground? On the gold loan? I don't know the number, but we also know when there is nothing significant. Nothing significant. Perfect. Sir, second question is in our personal loan book. How big is this book, and how are we scaling it up? In the last one year, how would we have grown this business? And is it to existing gold loan customers who are maturing and maybe taking unsecured, or is it new to Muthoot customers? I think we had today INR 1,200 crores personal loan. Probably a year back, it would have been about INR 800 crores. We actually wanted to give only to our existing gold loan customers only. But of course, we're not able to do that. But a part of it is given to our existing gold loan customers. Not that when the gold is released, all our gold loan customers, many of them have a personal loan elsewhere. We are just trying to give the personal loan from Muthoot instead of taking from XYZ. That is the reason for the personal loan. This is not a new business. It's not a new business. We are there for the last five years plus. Eight years. Eight years. But we scaled up from INR 800 crores to INR 40,200 crores in one year, right? And especially when unsecured has become a big challenge. I'm just trying to understand how is this playing out. And second is because the LTV. It's hard work. I understood. All right. Because the problem, sorry. One last question is on your home loans. You mentioned to one of the previous participants that that's a second area where you can maybe scale business up. But when we've seen last six, seven years, the business has been around this INR 2,000-odd crore range. Any learnings from our past? What went wrong? How have we changed the team? Have we done anything different to this time around scale this business up from this INR 2,000-odd crores to INR 5,000-INR 10,000 crores over the next three, four years? What are we doing? What are the investments? We would like to grow it. That's what our desire is to grow the gold loan book gradually. Yes. Of course, we had a setback during the COVID. During the COVID time, actually, we went slow, and actually, we regrew our book also. But now we are back on track, and as you said, we have changed the team also. Maybe that was two years back. We changed the team. Understood. And can we expect this book to be 5,000-odd crores in the next two, three years time? Can this book double in three years? Definitely, we would like it to be there. Okay, sir. That will be useful. Thank you so much. Thank you. One point earlier, Mr. Shubhranshu was asking on the ticket size break-up. So about 3 lakh is 32% of the overall book. And 1 lakh to 3 lakh is 36%. Less than 1 lakh is 32%. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Nischint from Kotak Institutional Equities. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. This is again going back to the non-gold loans. So what you mentioned is that personal loans are around INR 12,000 crores. But I think as I do the math, the other non-gold loans are around INR 4,000 crores. So what is the balance? Personal loan, pure personal loan is about INR 1,125 crores. We also give personal loans to gold loan customers who have been dealing with us for a particular period of time. That's about INR 1,015 crores. We have a business loan of about INR 600 crores. We also have SME loans. That is both put together at INR 615 crores. The corporate loans of about INR 86 crores and loans to subsidiaries about INR 1,100 crores. That's it. Got it, and the big growth that we can see here is essentially in across segments or in specific segments that have grown so well in the last couple of quarters? Growth has come from the Gold Loan. Yeah. I see that. But I'm saying last year, second quarter, this book was around INR 1,400 crores. Now it's INR 4,000 crores. So this comes. That comes from the personal loan book. Okay. And if I understand what you said is that NPA in this INR 4,000 crore book is around INR 193 crores in this quarter versus INR 90 crores in the first quarter. So that's almost closer to 5% NPA in this segment. So how should one think about it? So it is fully provided for it. And the increase has also happened because of the increase in the loans to subsidiaries. That is about INR 1,000 crores, which was probably not there last year. No. But the point is if your NPAs are one of the almost INR 100 crores, I think that's kind of accounting for almost half the credit cost for the quarter, right? So we're just curious how to think about this business. Nischint, see, finally, we have a very firm policy in terms of writing off. We try to write off loans when it becomes overdue for 180 days. That is a very standard policy we follow. Irrespective of what is the status, we write off. That is an automatic process which happens in terms of the personal loan book. That is the reason why it happens. And subsequently, it gets recovered. Whatever recovery happens, it comes in the balance recovered. Sure. Got it. And any number you could quantify on the interest income that you could earn after these loans which were sold to ARC are sort of now kind of run down because incrementally we earned enough? This quarter, we have added about INR 35 crores. Okay. And any quantum? How much is there in the pool after this? Principal amount outstanding will be about INR 160 crores. Got it. Got it. Thank you very much and all the best. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jigar Jani from B&K Securities. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking my question and. Thank you. Just one question. Thank you, sir. I would request you to please use your handset. Hello. Is this sir? Yes. Please go ahead, sir. Yeah. The current. The voice is breaking. The current participant got disconnected. We'll move on to the next participant. The next question is from the line of Bunty Chawla from IDBI Capital. Please go ahead. Thank you, sir. Thank you for giving me the opportunity and congrats on a good set of numbers. Sir, in the Belstar Microfinance, as we have seen in the industry also, there has been a good amount of increase in the NPA. So need to share your thoughts how the NPA pressure going in Q3, Q4, how is the situation on the ground, as well as what we have seen more, how many of our customers have more than four borrowers? Sorry, four lenders. If you can share some bit of data on that and your thought process on the MFI portfolio. I don't have that information. Okay, sir. So your view on the MFI portfolio because it's the NPAs Q1, Q2's increase and how one should see this panning out in Q3 and Q4, how the asset quality has been? Yeah. So all the microfinance is going out of stress now. Probably after a while, it should ease out. That's what our. Even during COVID times, just like everybody faced the challenge, we also faced the challenge. Our profits dipped and subsequently came back. I think the microfinance business runs like that. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Komal Modi from Investec Capital Services. Please go ahead. Hello, sir. Thank you for the opportunity. I just had one question. In a recent con call, one of your competitors said that in an inspection, the regulator had raised concerns about giving personal loan to their existing gold loan customers. But I can see that we have a portfolio of around INR 1,500-odd crores which we have given as personal loan to our existing loan customers. So has there been any interaction with the regulator on this? Or I just wanted to understand if there could be any potential regulatory compliance issue on this. So when we started the personal loan also, we look after we give loans to anybody who wants, and the data is from the customers who have gold loan with us also. Who have taken a gold loan or a gold loan with us, that's the database only we are using. But we are having its own underwriting norms. They don't have a gold loan with us. They might have had a gold loan earlier, or they might be having a gold loan. That is immaterial with us. It's just the customer data. And these customers all have taken personal loans from elsewhere. It's only based on that that we give a loan. The difference is personal loan product, it is sourced from outside. The other loan is based on the track record of our existing customer in this business. He may not have an outstanding gold loan book right now. Okay. But there can be some overlap that the customer has taken a gold loan from you and a personal loan from you. But that product is not offered to all the gold loan customers. Only the creditworthy customers we assess and we give them. And the product is EMI-based, not a bullet repayment there. Okay. Okay. Understood. And just to ask, from how many branches are we sourcing personal loans? And what is the proportion of the digital personal loans? Personal loans, we don't source from branches. We don't have digital personal loans. We don't have digital personal loans, first of all. And second, personal loans are not. It is only the customer number they have so that they call them and ask whether they need a personal loan. It is only done through 40 branches of personal loan. Personal loan has its own branches, its own setup, its own people. The Muthoot Finance branch does not do any personal loans. Only gold loans. Okay. Got it. Thank you so much. Thank you. The next question is from the line of Jigar Jani from B&K Securities. Please go ahead. Yeah. Hi. Am I audible? Yes, sir. Yeah. Yeah. So congratulations, Kirti, on a great set of numbers. Just one question. What would be our guidance on credit costs? Because now, over the last two quarters, we have seen about a 1% credit cost in the first half, significantly higher than what we have seen over several years. So would this continue, or do you see that kind of normalizing in the second half or? Our credit cost quarter on quarter would be around INR 30 crores. I think that's a rough number. It might be more. Credit cost. So the write-offs is for this quarter. It is INR 16 crores. First quarter, it is INR 12 crores. Yeah. That's the credit cost. The rest is the ECL provisions. Yeah. So if you continue to give more time to your customers, this elevated ECL, you will maintain the ECL at these levels, which is about 1.4% of the overall gross loan assets. Is that correct? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. So on the growth, roughly, it is around 1%. For the NPAs, it will come roughly around 10% on gold loan. Okay. Understood. Thank you so much for answering it. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will take that as the last question. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments. So, good evening, once again, and thank you all for participating in the call. Your support and your cooperation with us keeps us going. As usual, we will do our best to see that all the stakeholders are taken care of, whether it is our customers, whether it is our banks, whether it is our shareholders, whether regulators. We will try our best and keep everybody happy. We will do everything in our power to see that our shareholders and other stakeholders are benefited by Muthoot. Once again, thank you all. We wish you a happy Christmas and New Year in advance. On behalf of Nirmal Bang Equities Private Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.