Temporary staff sell cards, loans booming

Despite the Reserve Bank of India stricture on unsecured loans and the growth momentum in personal loans tapering off in February, demand for manpower to sell credit cards and loans continues to increase, according to staffing services companies and executives from the banking and financial services sector.

Staffing mandates in frontline sales jobs from BFSI companies are 14-20% higher this month compared with a year earlier, show estimates from Quess Corp and Teamlease Services, two of the largest providers of temporary staff to the sector.

According to industry executives, about 25,000-30,000 frontline sales personnel are likely to be hired in the April-June quarter to cater to the rising demand in the retail and unsecured loan categories.

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“We have seen a 14-15% year-on-year increase in demand for staffing in the credit card and personal loans space. This reflects the robust competition among banks and NBFCs to improve market share and strong demand for consumer credit in mid- and large-size ticket categories,” said Kartik Narayan, chief executive-staffing at Teamlease Services. Attrition in the sales segment also continues to be high with a lot of infant attrition (about 17% people leaving within a month of onboarding).

Lohit Bhatia, president of Workforce Management at Quess Corp, said: “We are seeing demand growth of nearly 15-20% in the credit card, personal loans segment that create growing demand in sales across credit card companies, NBFCs and fintech within the BFSI space. This segment has been growing at the same rate and will continue to grow as credit card penetration and more purchases on EMI will continue to happen.”

According to data from the RBI, year-on-year growth of unsecured personal loans of banks moderated to 23.1% in February from 24.4% in January and 27.6% in December 2023.

“Banks will have to penetrate the credit market – in terms of retail and unsecured loans – which is still relatively underpenetrated, in order to take advantage of long-term structural opportunities,” said Abheek Barua, chief economist, HDFC Bank. For this, they will need manpower, he added.

“While RBI’s guidance – which is more cyclical in nature and issued due to overheating of some markets – will have to be adhered to, credit cards and personal loans constitute a long-term opportunity for banks and financial services institutions which they have to leverage. However, banks need to be mindful of risks and best practices,” said Barua.

“The share of credit card and personal loans in the total loan portfolio is still very low in India and this space will continue to grow and banks need to be adequately staffed,” said Madan Sabnavis, chief economist, Bank of Baroda. “Outstanding credit card loan (at Rs 2.58 lakh crore in February) is just about 1.6% of banks’ overall loan portfolio and hence there is a huge opportunity in the segment to expand with rising consumption level and proliferation of online and ecommerce buying,” he added.

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