The IIFL board is likely to consider a separate listing of HFC by year-end, says MD

Nirmal Jain, Founder of IIFL Group and Managing Director of IIFL Finance

The IIFL group may also consider attracting newer investors to its microfinance subsidiary IIFL Samasta Finance, he said.

“Listing plans are material information, and we will have to disclose that to (the) stock exchanges. At this point, we will take it to the board and discuss it in perhaps the next three to six months. The HFC (IIFL Home Finance) also has external stakeholders,” Jain said. “We will try to attract new investors (at IIFL Samasta Finance). The MFI sector has come back to life, the business community has come back to life, the trough is behind us and things are looking good. We will find good investors or partners, and talks would take place. So far we have not had any talks about disinvestment,” he added.

IIFL Finance has an 80 percent stake in its home finance arm, while Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) owns the rest. The microfinance subsidiary is 100 percent owned by IIFL Finance. IIFL Home Finance’s assets under management stood at ₹39,628 crore in the third quarter, while IIFL Samasta Finance’s assets under management stood at ₹9,681 crore.

Special IT audit

Shares of IIFL Finance had surged up to 15 percent last Thursday after it informed the stock exchange that the Income Tax (IT) department had directed the company to get its accounts audited for a specific block period and appoint a special accountant for the same. Jain said he does not expect any fines or additional liability as a result of this audit.

“When the search was conducted a year ago, officials could not see the entire accounts and recommended a special audit. Special audit is a very general term. There are certain areas where they collected transaction data, like for example cash payments on gold loans, or cash receipts from customers, reconciliation etc,” Jain said.

“They already took two to three days to get backed up because there are millions of transactions… So this is not a new development and if you ask me it could be a good thing for us. It calms things down instead of the tax officer not being able to estimate the tax liability and fixing it on the worst estimate basis. I don’t expect any fine or additional liability,” he added.

Business guidance

IIFL Finance last week also reported its consolidated net profit for Q3FY26 at ₹501 crore, over six times higher than the same period last year, as revenue from off-books assets improved sharply. The NBFC’s assets under management rose 38 per cent year-on-year to ₹98,336 crore.

Jain said the NBFC has great potential to increase return on equity (RoE) as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has lifted the restriction on IIFL Finance to offer gold loans.

“(Even) when our loan assets under management were reduced, we did not reduce our operating costs. We retained our employees, increased their salaries and bonuses across branches so that our fixed overheads were there even during the RBI-imposed embargo on gold loans. At that time, our gold loan book fell by 70 percent,” he said.

“As the book grows, we are getting the operating leverage. Historically, our RoE has been 20 per cent. So we can expand on the current RoE,” he said, adding that going forward, the NBFC is targeting 20 to 25 per cent growth in assets under management, and improvement in net interest margin. IIFL Finance will also consider raising ₹1,000-1,500 crore through NCDs in February, he said.

Published on January 26, 2026