Branch Manager - Gold Loan

About the Role and Organization

The Branch Manager for Gold Loans at Aditya Birla Capital Limited (ABCL) is accountable for leading branch-level business performance across locations in India, driving disbursement, customer acquisition, portfolio quality, and regulatory compliance. Reporting into senior management, the role involves overseeing a compact frontline team to meet multiple KPIs including audit, collections, yield, and risk management while ensuring operational discipline.

Business and Operational Context

ABCL is a Systematically Important NBFC with a diverse lending portfolio and a pan-India presence, currently managing a loan book valued at approximately Rs. 139,500 Crores. The gold loan product is a secured loan offering with high transaction volume that requires diligent valuation, purity testing, and trusted customer engagement for competitive advantage and compliance.

Key Responsibilities

• Cultivate strong relationships with local customers, partners, authorities, and community leaders to bolster customer acquisition.
• Lead and supervise branch personnel including Assistant Branch Managers, Gold Valuers, Loan Officers, and Customer Service Executives to ensure target productivity and performance.
• Guarantee precise evaluation of gold assets, adherence to Loan-to-Value (LTV) norms, and rigorous documentation for all loan transactions.
• Ensure strict compliance with RBI guidelines, internal policies, risk mitigation procedures, and audit standards including purity testing processes.
• Monitor delinquency rates, yield metrics, tonnage, auction ratios, and manage cases such as spurious or bentex gold to maintain portfolio health.
• Drive collections focusing on 0-30 days past due bucket and proactively minimize slippage to non-performing assets.
• Maintain audit scores above 90% with zero tolerance for deviations or operational breaches.
• Deliver an exemplary customer experience that respects the sensitive nature of gold loans as emotional assets.
• Motivate, train, and develop frontline staff for consistent sales growth and efficient service delivery.

Challenges

• Meeting ambitious customer acquisition, disbursement, and tonnage growth targets within a fiercely competitive local market environment.
• Maintaining rigorous adherence to gold purity standards, valuation accuracy amid fluctuating gold prices, and LTV guidelines.
• Expeditiously resolving spurious/bentex cases and reducing auction-to-book ratios.
• Preventing loan portfolio deterioration by managing collection activities and overdue accounts effectively.
• Ensuring operational compliance and audit excellence at the branch level.
• Balancing operational cost efficiency with profitability and customer satisfaction.

KRA and Supporting Actions

• Business Growth & Acquisition: Achieve targets for new customer account creation, drive disbursements, and support tonnage increases in alignment with branch plans.
• Yield & Profitability Management: Maintain target onboarding yields, drive optimal loan ticket sizes along with a healthy mix of renewals and repeat customers, and manage branch operating expenses prudently.
• Portfolio Quality & Risk Management: Ensure strict compliance with LTV and documentation, maintain purity verification standards, and promptly address spurious gold cases.
• Collections & Delinquency Management: Manage overdue accounts diligently and enforce timely follow ups to prevent slippages.
• Compliance, Audit & Governance: Attain required audit scores, close identified audit findings, and uphold accuracy in operations and vault management.
• Customer Service & Branch Experience: Provide fast, high-quality service, resolve grievances quickly, and maintain safety and cleanliness standards at the branch.
• Leadership & Productivity: Lead and develop the branch team ensuring manpower productivity meets or exceeds benchmarks.

Direct Report Roles

• Assistant Branch Manager: Oversees daily operations and frontline staff productivity in the branch.
• Manager – Gold Valuation: Responsible for precise valuation, purity checks, and secure gold handling.
• Gold Loan Officer: Drives customer acquisition, loan disbursement, renewals and documentation compliance.
• Customer Service Executive: Provides superior customer interaction and supports the branch operation smoothly.

Key Relationships

• Internal:
  • Regional and Cluster Heads - daily interaction for business planning and governance.
  • IT Team - frequent collaboration for system support and process improvement.
  • Marketing Team - periodic coordination for campaigns and lead generation.
  • Risk, Policy, Audit, Compliance, HR Teams - as needed interaction for escalations, audit findings, training, and hiring.
• External:
  • Customers - engagement for product queries and relationship building.
  • Vendors/Security Partners - coordination for vault security and operational support.
  • Local Influencers and Community Stakeholders - collaboration for acquisition and outreach efforts.