Part of the Aditya Birla Capital Limited, Aditya Birla Housing Finance Limited (ABHFL) is registered with the National Housing Bank as a housing finance company under the National Housing Bank Act, 1987. The company offers a complete range of housing finance solutions such as home loans, home improvement and home construction loans, balance transfer and top-up loans, loans against property and construction finance. The company acquired its license on 9 th July 2014 and has aggressive growth plans.
ABHFL has grown at a steady rate while reporting good asset quality despite challenges in the operating environment. While the industry is dominated by five large groups, there has been an emergence of segments like Affordable and self-employed borrowers, given the high potential in these segments. Despite increased focus by banks, HFCs have been able to maintain their share in the mortgage market. and is poised for rapid growth and plans to grow 5X (40,000 Cr) in the next 5 years. This shall take ABHFL within the top 5 percentile of HFCs in the country.
The ABHFL Sales organization works broadly with 3 customer segments retail (individual) customers, institutional customers (for retail and institutional loan consumers) and builders (for both retail tie-ups and construction finance), with a major share of the business coming from retail customers. Client segments can also be divided into Salaried and Self-employed, with both of these having very different preferences and needs.
Job Context
Key Aspects:
Providing housing finance (to buyers), Loan against Property, Commercial Property Purchase, Lease Rental Discounting and Construction Finance (to builders) solutions, ABHFL caters to a diverse range of customer segments through its various service offerings. Additionally, being predominantly retail driven, the business is characterized by high volume of loan transactions and customer relationships. As a result, ABHFL business performance is strongly impacted by people, process and organizational efficiencies, alongside core business drivers such as product/ solution quality, channel and customer relationship management and risk management.
While unit of sizing up the business is its loan book size, profitability and minimized delinquency are also key business objectives.
Higher cost of funding impacts profitability as well as competitiveness of loan rates that can be offered to clients
For retail customers, identifying and acting on relevant needs for target demographics/ customer segments/ etc., in an efficient manner ensuring process, statutory and regulatory compliance at all times, are key for building business performance and sustainability.
For institutional/ builder customers, understanding and addressing complex business requirements via proactive relationship management and customized solution fitment, while ensuring compliance at all times, are important to gain competitive advantage in this segment.
The ZSM -ABHFL is responsible for driving zonal sales operations in line with the strategy devised and agreed with the Chief Business Officer ABHFL, to achieve targeted book size, profitability, growth & customer service objectives via requisite business development, client engagement and team mobilization initiatives.
Key Challenges
Over 70 Banks and HFCs are operating in a highly cluttered and extremely competitive market. Each customer segment has its own specific perceptions and preferences, along with existing key banking relationships and very competitive pricing offerings from multiple existing brands. Thus developing effective strategy and driving execution is critical to ensure positive differentiation and profitable growth
Vastly distributed operations and retail nature of business add complexities of managing operations that are geographically widespread while maintaining controls through effective delegation and oversight
Another significant challenge is to attract and retain top talent who have multitude of choices and more established brands with lucrative offering. Rapid pace of entry of new lenders is further accentuating the dearth of quality talent and need for retaining them
In view of the above factors, it is important to nuance and drive a zonal strategy that is differentiated and innovative and that can withstand competitive pressures to grow market share
The zonal business strategy must factor for zone-specific realities and challenges associated with being a new brand in a cluttered marketplace. The nuances of business strategy span across distribution, resourcing & capacity utilization, channel mix, product & portfolio mix, pricing & cross sell, customer retention etc.
To stay up to date on the latest market and sector trends, identifying opportunities/ challenges for the zonal business to capitalize on/ prepare for, and provide relevant inputs to the Chief Business Officer as well
To ensure loan conversion/ sanction/ utilization percentages are high and an appropriate sourcing funnel is built to meet targets
To constantly upgrade financial & operational know how of self and team members on industry dynamics, effective negotiation and relationship building, and efficient loan processing for maintaining lasting relationships with customers while ensuring portfolio health and profitability
To review and take decisions on complex credit transactions with a keen eye on structuring/ credit quality and pricing
To ensure credit quality and effective portfolio selection/ pre-screening thereby minimizing potential NPAs
To ensure compliant zonal sales operations at all times, despite target pressures and market cycles
Enabling Skill Sets & Qualifications
Critical skill sets required to meet these challenges include business acumen, strong team management and communication, execution skills, solid product-market understanding, and operations integration & controlling skills.
Education & experience required to fulfil this profile are a postgraduate with minimum 12 - 15 yrs of total sales experience in the Banking/ NBFC space, of which at least recent 8 - 10 yrs experience should be in lending / HFC with exposure to different states.
