The NBFC credit cycle and what it did to hiring
Every lending cycle rewrites the NBFC org chart. This one is rewriting it in risk's favor.
Indian NBFCs grew unsecured lending aggressively, then met the correction: rising slippages, tighter funding, sharper RBI supervision. The hiring consequence is a visible rotation - away from pure growth roles, toward the functions that clean up and prevent.
The rotation in practice
- Collections and recovery leadership: from back-office to boardroom priority, with compensation to match
- Credit policy and portfolio analytics: the people who can redesign underwriting are suddenly the most courted in the building
- Funding and treasury: ALM and liability-side talent matters again when money is not free
- Regulatory affairs: the RBI relationship has become a business function
What did not disappear
Secured lending - gold loans, LAP, vehicle finance - kept growing through the correction, and hiring there never paused. The market's verdict was on underwriting quality, not on lending itself.
The lesson for careers
Credit cycles repeat. Professionals who build skills on both sides of the cycle - growth and workout, origination and recovery - are employed in all of them. The most valuable resume line in Indian lending right now is not "grew the book 3x"; it is "managed the book through the correction, and here are the numbers."