Hopeful of receiving regulatory approvals for business with BlackRock, tech stack ready for market entry: Jio Financial at 1st AGM – Banking & Finance News
While speaking at the first Annual General Meeting (AGM) post demerger and listing on stock exchanges in August 2023, Hitesh Sethia, MD & CEO, Jio Financial Services Limited (JFSL), said that the company is excited about the potential of its JV with BlackRock and is hopeful of receiving the necessary approvals for this business from the regulator.
“We have already identified the key leadership for our AMC JV with BlackRock and are in advanced stages of developing our tech infra and market strategy. We are hopeful of receiving the necessary approvals for this business from the regulator at the appropriate time, and commencing operations thereafter,” he said. BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager with over $10 trillion of assets under management. While the initial JV was announced for an asset management company in July 2023, it was extended to wealth management and broking services in April 2024.
“Our understanding of the Indian market and consumer, and distribution reach; coupled with BlackRock’s renowned expertise in asset management will help us bring world-class investment products to Indians – spanning mutual funds, wealth management services, and broking,” Hitesh Sethia added.
While talking about the company’s growth, Hitesh Sethia said that one of the significant milestones for Jio Financial Services was to go live with the JioFinance app in May 2024, which has crossed over 1 million downloads, and the numbers are growing each day. “Some of the services which are already live on the JioFinance app including Loans on Mutual Funds, Savings Account, UPI Bill Payments, Digital Insurance, Recharges, and more products will be going live soon,” he said.
He maintained that Jio Financial Services is not weighed down by legacy technology and has been able to successfully implement a modular and scalable tech stack, that is cloud-first. “Our tech backbone will support our distribution approach, which will be direct to customer, digital or at the point of sale embedded in the customer journey. In addition to a strong tech architecture, data analytics will play a central role. The three sets of data we will leverage here are credit bureau data, data from account aggregators, and alternate data,” Hitesh Sethia said.
Jio Financial Services was demerged from Reliance Industries Limited in 2023 and post NCLT approval, the company was listed on the stock exchanges in August 2023.
Meanwhile, KV Kamath, Chairman, Jio Financial Services, said, “Our journey has just begun, but we are well on our way towards creating an institution that plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of finance, while ensuring growth and well-being for the people of India.”
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