There is a quiet confidence to the way Muthoot Finance approaches its own guidance. For over a decade, India’s largest gold loan NBFC has told the market to expect around 15% growth in gold loan assets — and then, almost as a matter of routine, gone well past it. It is not sandbagging, exactly. It is something more considered: a discipline of underselling and overdelivering that has become something of a house style at the Kerala-based lender.
FY25 was, even by those standards, something else. Standalone AUM jumped 43% to ₹1.08 trillion. Gold loan assets hit ₹1.03 trillion — meaning the company had effectively doubled its portfolio in under three years. Annual net profit crossed the ₹5,000-crore mark for the first time. And Muthoot Finance retained its position as the only pure-play gold loan NBFC in the RBI’s Upper Layer NBFC category — for the third consecutive year.
Muthoot’s performance did not happen in isolation. FY25 was a landmark year for India’s gold loan industry, which emerged as the fastest-growing credit segment in the financial sector. “With Indian households estimated to hold over 25,000 tonnes of gold, of which only a small portion is monetised through organised lending, the medium- to long-term runway for growth in gold loans remains significant and sustainable,” says George Alexander Muthoot, Managing Director, Muthoot Finance.
The arithmetic is compelling. Gold prices have doubled over the past decade. The value of idle household gold has risen accordingly — to somewhere between ₹10 lakh crore and ₹20 lakh crore by Muthoot’s own estimates. As that number climbs, so does awareness of what that gold could do if put to work.
“As gold prices rise, people are increasingly realising the value of the asset they possess and are monetising it,” Muthoot says. “This creates strong prospects for the gold loan business going forward.”
The year was not without its complications. Domestic gold prices surged more than 50% during FY25 — welcome news for collateral values, but a double-edged development that also raised the spectre of margin pressure should prices correct sharply.
The RBI introduced draft guidelines on gold lending, subsequently implemented from April 2026, that revised the loan-to-value ratio to 85% for loans below ₹2.5 lakh and required lenders to rework their underwriting practices, operational workflows and technology infrastructure. For an industry accustomed to operating on well-worn processes, the recalibration demanded real effort.
Competition, too, has grown noticeably sharper. Lending by scheduled commercial banks against gold jewellery nearly doubled to ₹2.23 trillion in FY25, a signal that the segment’s growth story had not gone unnoticed in the broader banking system. Traditional NBFCs were joined by a fresh wave of fintech players, all drawn by the same strong fundamentals.
Muthoot’s response to this crowding has been characteristic: stay disciplined, stay focused, and let the numbers make the case.
If FY25 was the year Muthoot Finance announced itself at a new scale, FY26 suggests the story is far from complete. Gold loan AUM rose another 50% to ₹1.54 lakh crore — another year, another guidance quietly left in the dust.
