Area Head - Gold Loan

Role summary

The Area Head for Gold Loans is accountable for translating business strategy into on-ground execution across the assigned territory. This role focuses on building the gold loan franchise, improving profitability, maintaining portfolio health, strengthening compliance, and leading branch teams to meet business objectives.

Business context

This position sits within Financial Services under Aditya Birla Capital Limited. The wider organization is a systemically important, non-deposit-taking NBFC registered with the RBI and operates across India with a broad lending portfolio spanning retail, SME, corporate, and secured financing solutions.

ABCL is a diversified NBFC with a pan-India footprint and a lending book of approximately Rs. 139,500 Crores as of 31-Sep’25. The company offers end-to-end lending products for retail, HNI, MSME, mid and large corporate customers, and also has a Wealth Management division. It is rated AAA by India Ratings, ICRA, and CARE, and has received multiple awards including ABG Business Excellence Awards.

Job purpose

The role exists to deliver regional gold loan growth while maintaining tight risk control and operating discipline. It is responsible for achieving targets related to AUM, disbursements, P&L, branch expansion, portfolio quality, and regulatory compliance through effective team leadership.

Scope and dimensions

• Build new relationships with enabling functions and regional stakeholders for a relatively new business line.
• Lead multiple branch heads and oversee distributed branch teams across the area.
• Develop area business plans, manpower structure, and productivity benchmarks aligned with the national strategy.
• Ensure adherence to all regulatory and internal compliance requirements.
• Track portfolio performance and market movements continuously.

Major challenges

• Growing AUM quickly while keeping LTV discipline, NPAs low, and collateral cover strong in a volatile gold-price environment.
• Maintaining zero-deviation compliance with RBO guidelines across a wide branch network without slowing business momentum.
• Preventing fraud, jewelry substitution, insider collusion, and security lapses while operations scale up.
• Raising the performance of weak branches and controlling fixed costs in a high-volume, low-ticket business model.
• Protecting the branch brand by ensuring clear, fast, and respectful customer service for an emotionally sensitive asset class.

Key result areas

• Scale the business in a sustainable way through AUM growth, disbursement achievement, customer base expansion, market share improvement, and balanced new vs. renewal mix.
• Drive profitability and P&L outcomes by improving margin, yield, cost efficiency, operating profit, ROA/ROE, and incremental profit per branch.
• Maintain portfolio quality and risk controls through GNPA/NNPA management, LTV adherence, auction loss control, fraud monitoring, and delinquency recovery.
• Strengthen branch productivity by expanding the network as planned, reducing break-even time, improving branch-wise AUM and disbursement, and lifting underperforming branches.
• Improve sales effectiveness and customer acquisition by increasing frontline productivity, improving conversion, lowering acquisition cost, and supporting repeat and cross-sell business.
• Ensure compliance, audit readiness, and regulatory discipline across RBI, internal audit, policy adherence, documentation, purity testing, and zero-tolerance breaches.
• Build people capability through hiring continuity, succession readiness, training coverage, attrition control, and productivity improvement after training.

Reporting structure

The position is expected to supervise the Regional Head - Gold Loan. Roles likely to report into this function include Branch Manager - Gold Loan and, in the Branch Manager’s absence, the Manager Gold Valuation, Gold Loan Officer, and Customer Service Executive.

Stakeholder relationships

Internal stakeholders

• IT team: weekly or fortnightly coordination for website updates, online platform initiatives, staff IT training, and back-office support.
• Marketing team: weekly or fortnightly discussions around promotional plans, lead-generation campaigns, and web-based campaigns.
• Support functions such as Risk, Policy, Audit, Compliance, and HR: weekly, as needed, for product, business, and team-related coordination.

External stakeholders

• Customers: need-based engagement for product feedback, complaint handling, and escalation management.
• Channel partners and investment banks: need-based interaction for new product recommendations, funding trend discussions, and market analytics.
• Vendors: need-based discussions on product ideas, negotiations, joint value propositions, and support for marketing and training.

Additional information

• Basic details in the source indicate that the JD should capture business, unit, location, position, reporting line, and the date of JD update.
• Business: Financial Services.
• Unit: Aditya Birla Capital Limited.
• Location: Across branches in India.

Performance metrics

• AUM growth year over year and quarter over quarter.
• Disbursement value versus plan.
• Active customer base growth.
• Market share in key geographies.
• Average ticket size / loan amount.
• Mix of growth between new and renewal loans.
• Net interest margin.
• Yield on gold loan portfolio.
• Cost-to-income ratio.
• Operating profit.
• ROA and ROE.
• Incremental profit per branch.
• GNPA / NNPA, SMA levels, LTV compliance, auction loss, fraud incidence, and recovery rate after delinquency.
• New branch openings versus plan, break-even time, AUM per branch, disbursement per branch and per RM, and reduction in low-performing branches.
• Disbursement per sales officer or BM, acquisition cost, lead-to-disbursement conversion, repeat customer ratio, and cross-sell / upsell ratio.
• RBI and internal audit observations, policy deviation cases, purity testing compliance, documentation accuracy, and zero-tolerance breach incidents.
• Attrition, critical role vacancy turnaround time, successor readiness, training coverage, and productivity improvement after training.