Nirmal Jain, Founder, IIFL Group and Managing Director, IIFL Finance
Non-bank major IIFL Finance’s board could consider planning an initial public offering (IPO) for its housing finance company (HFC), IIFL Home Finance, over the next 3-6 months, group Founder Nirmal Jain told businessline. The IIFL group could also consider onboarding newer investors to its microfinance subsidiary IIFL Samasta Finance, he said.
“Listing plans are material information and we will have to disclose to (the) exchanges. At this point, we will take it to the board and discuss in maybe the next 3-6 months. The HFC (IIFL Home Finance) also has external stakeholders,” Jain said. “We will try to onboard new investors (to IIFL Samasta Finance). The MFI sector has revived, business has revived, the trough is behind us and things are looking up. We will find good investors or partners, and talks would happen going ahead. As of now we have not held talks for a divestment,” he added.
IIFL Finance holds 80 per cent stake in its housing finance arm, with Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) holding the rest. The microfinance subsidiary is 100 per cent owned by IIFL Finance. The assets under management of IIFL Home Finance stood at ₹39,628 crore in Q3, while IIFL Samasta Finance’s AUM was at ₹9,681 crore.
I-T special audit
IIFL Finance’s shares had cracked up to 15 per cent last Thursday, after it informed exchanges that the Income Tax (I-T) department has directed the company to get its account audited for a specified block period and appoint a special auditor for the same. Jain said that he does not foresee any penalty or additional liability from this audit.
“When the search was conducted a year ago, officials could not see entire accounts and recommended special audit. Special audit is a very generic term. There are certain areas where they collected transactions data like, for instance, in gold loans cash payments, or cash receipts from customers, reconciliation etc.,” Jain said.
“They took 2-3 days just to take backup because there are millions of transactions…So, this is not a new development and if you ask me it may be a good thing for us. It puts things to rest rather than the assessing officer not being able to estimate liable tax and assesses on worst estimate. I don’t expect any penalty or additional liability,” he added.
Business guidance
IIFL Finance last week also reported its consolidated net profit for Q3FY26 at ₹501 crore, up over six-fold from same period last year, as income from off-book assets improved sharply. The NBFC’s AUM rose 38 per cent on-year to ₹98,336 crore.
Jain said that the NBFC has a large scope for increasing return on equity (RoE) going ahead, now that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has lifted the restriction on IIFL Finance from offering gold loans.
“(Even) when our loan AUM had reduced, we did not reduce our operating cost. We held on to our employees, hiked their salaries and bonuses across branches so our fixed overheads were present even during RBI-ordered embargo on gold loans. At that time, our gold loan book reduced by 70 per cent,” he said.
“Now, as the book grows, we get the operating leverage. Historically, our RoE used to be 20 per cent. So, we can expand on current RoE,” he said, adding that the NBFC is targeting 20-25 per cent AUM growth going ahead, and improvement in net interest margin. IIFL Finance will also consider raising ₹1,000-₹1,500 crore via NCDs in February, he said.
Published on January 26, 2026
