If there’s one company that has made decades-old telecalling a hotly debated matter, it’s India’s largest non-bank Bajaj Finance. It seems the country’s middle class can’t escape its call-centre agents.
“No one does call centres the way Bajaj does. It runs them at an industrial level,” said a senior executive at a prominent non-banking financial company (NBFC).
Bajaj Finance has a large loan book of ~Rs 2.3 lakh crore (~$28 billion). And its existing base of customers alone accounts for a rich 60-65% of the loans; for any other non-bank that would be 35-40%.
Like other lenders, Bajaj Finance has many ways to acquire borrowers—it uses its 4,000+ branches, 150,000 point-of-sale (PoS) networks, employs field agents, sends emails, SMSes, and contacts digitally through its website and app. But one of its most enduring sales channels is its team of 4,500+ outsourced call-centre agents.
Lenders, in general, find call centres an evergreen channel because ~80% of all consumer lending is assisted by humans, said a senior executive of a fintech company.
“Even though everyone uses call centres for outbound sales, Bajaj has taken it to another level. Even in the industry, people are surprised at the intensity of its efforts,” said the non-bank executive. So much so that it has become a subject of social-media memes in recent times.
This notoriety notoriety Entrackr Bajaj Finance faces backlash over excessive pesky calls, messages Read more is symbolic of how crucial this channel is for Bajaj Finance.
The non-bank has over 50 products—ranging from loans dedicated to doctors to loans for getting a hair transplant. On average, ~45% of loans to existing customers are pitched via calls, said a former Bajaj call-centre manager.
It’s not that the company is unaware of the pesky nature of its sales calls. It even updated its governance mechanism in 2022 to ensure no customer receives more than two calls a month.
In the three months ended December 2022, Bajaj Finance added over 3 million customers and gave out 7.8 million new loans—its highest ever. With that kind of growth, the volume of calls is unlikely to have gone down, according to a former senior Bajaj executive, as call centres are among its top sales channels.
Bajaj Finance told The Ken that it added 10 million customers to the formal financial system in the last three years. And that it gets a dominant portion of loans through its PoS network and digital assets. “Loans originated by our call centres and direct selling agents [DSAs] account for a relatively smaller number. Our existing customers account for two-thirds of our PoS financing transactions, and almost all of it happens through EMI card EMI card Existing Member Identification card It is a product that Bajaj issues to its existing customers, which they can then use like a debit or credit card in subsequent purchases at stores that are part of Bajaj Finance's network .”
Meanwhile, it is also trying to eke out more efficiency from its call centres.
