After building a 300-million-strong customer franchise, Sanjiv Bajaj is turning to artificial intelligence to script the next chapter at Bajaj Finserv. He tells Shobhana Subramanian that AI will drive new revenues, lower costs and significantly boost productivity. Excerpts.
How do you see the business evolving over the coming years?
The last two decades have been about innovating financial solutions for the masses, building trust, investing in technology and nurturing a customer-first culture. We have evolved from a single-product captive auto finance company to one of India’s most diversified financial services groups.
As part of our four-year strategy, we are targeting a total income of Rs 3.1-3.4 lakh crore by 2030, implying a 19-21% CAGR. Our focus is to expand reach while delivering distinctly personalised engagement by embedding AI and advanced technologies across the enterprise and our digital platforms.
What would be a major change?
At Bajaj Finance, we are transitioning from a product-focused approach to a truly customer-centric model—serving all financial needs of the customer while continuing to strengthen talent and risk management. We also plan to launch wealth management in the near future.
We see opportunities to address insurance needs of non-resident Indians through GIFT City, as well as explore pension fund management. Regulatory developments such as Ind-AS, risk-based solvency and composite licences could also open new possibilities for the sector.
The group has already built a large customer base…
With offerings spanning lending, insurance, mortgages, mutual funds, investments, and health and wellness, we aim to be a financial lifecycle partner to every Indian. Across businesses, we serve over 300 million customers.
Bajaj Finance’s franchise alone has grown from 0.8 million customers in 2007-08 to 115.4 million today, while annual loan disbursals have expanded from about 1 million to an estimated 50 million.
Where does the strategic value of Fin-AI lie?
We believe Fin-AI will open up new revenue streams, substantially reduce costs, improve productivity and strengthen controllership across the organisation. Our FY26–30 strategy positions technology leadership as a key catalyst in transforming Bajaj Finance into a truly customer-centric Fin-AI company.
By leveraging advanced technologies to anticipate trends, reimagine business models and simplify customer experiences, we aim to deliver hyper-personalisation, improve productivity by 12-15%, achieve an opex-to-NIM ratio of 31%, and reduce operations and service costs by nearly 75%.
How widespread is the use of AI?
Over the past two years, we have deployed multiple AI use cases across operations, customer service, marketing content and contact centres. We are now expanding deployment across all 27 lines of business and functions.
To support this, we have built a 300-member team of domain and technology experts and are working closely with technology partners to accelerate deployment at scale. The impact of these initiatives will become more visible over the next 12-18 months, though early signs are already emerging from use cases launched in the third quarter.
Looking ahead, we expect to deploy over 600 autonomous AI agents across sales, operations, HR, risk and IT in the next fiscal year.
How well has AI worked so far?
In Q3FY26, voice AI agents contributed over Rs 1,300 crore in personal loan disbursements. We expect voice bot volumes to reach Rs 4,600 crore for FY26. We also have 11 conversational AI text bots live across products with encouraging conversion rates.
In customer service, 48% of resolutions are now handled by AI-powered bots. In the B2B segment, AI has conducted quality checks on 41% of loan applications. By March-end, we expect to deploy face recognition technology across 200 points of sale, service centres and gold loan branches.
AI is also improving underwriting quality, enabling stronger risk management and credit cost efficiencies, while driving operating efficiencies across the board.
How fast can Bajaj Finance’s share of total retail AUM grow?
Bajaj Finance accounts for 12.5% of loans booked in India but only 2.8% of retail AUM, indicating significant headroom to grow wallet share within its existing base.
To accelerate growth, we are transitioning to a customer-centric strategy anchored in design thinking—enhancing experience, building long-term relationships and creating products that address the full spectrum of customer needs.
By 2030, Bajaj Finance expects to build a customer franchise of 200-220 million, serve 20% of active households and disburse 100 million loans annually. This could increase retail credit market share to 3.6-4%.
How fast can the non-mortgage business grow?
The opportunity remains strong. Credit expansion, robust digital public infrastructure, and Bajaj Finance’s diversified capabilities and relatively low market share across key segments position us well for sustained growth.
While non-mortgage penetration is relatively high in some segments, India’s middle class and emerging middle class remain significantly underserved, offering a large long-term opportunity. Bajaj Housing Finance has emerged as one of the fastest-growing housing finance companies, delivering a 28.9% CAGR in disbursals while maintaining strong asset quality.
Interest rates do not seem to be coming down as fast as expected…
Despite the RBI cutting the repo rate to 5.25% in December 2025 and holding it thereafter, lending rates have seen limited reduction beyond EBLR-linked loans. This reflects lags in MCLR transmission rather than a breakdown in the system.
High-cost legacy deposits and tight liquidity conditions—where loan growth has outpaced deposit accretion—have kept loan-to-deposit ratios elevated. These are cyclical factors and should ease as deposit costs and balance sheet dynamics normalise.
Are you still interested in a banking licence?
No. As an upper-layer NBFC, Bajaj Finance operates with four distinct licences—lending, deposit-taking, distribution and payments. This diversified regulatory architecture adequately supports our business model and growth strategy.
How does a relatively new entrant differentiate itself in the AMC space?
Our primary differentiator is our products and investment philosophy. Technology is both an enabler and a differentiator in how we engage with distributors and investors.
For instance, we launched India’s first mutual fund distributor onboarding journey using WhatsApp and extended it to investor transactions. We also leveraged the Account Aggregator framework to create Savings+, which enables customers to earn returns on idle balances in savings accounts.
What distribution reforms would you like to see in insurance?
The traditional distribution architecture needs to evolve to achieve “Insurance for All”. Insurance remains a difficult product to sell, with low conversion rates and high fixed costs.
The Chief Agent model—where experienced agents recruit and manage smaller licensed agents—should be permitted with appropriate safeguards. Such models are widely used in Southeast Asia and could accelerate penetration by reducing fixed costs while expanding reach.