Getting pesky loan calls from Bajaj Finance? Here’s what Chairman Sanjiv Bajaj has to say

The first-ever phone call was made on March 10, 1876 when Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, called his assistant Thomas Watson. But do you know what Bell heard when he made the call? “Congratulations sir, you are eligible for a pre-approved loan from Bajaj Finance.” 

Funny, isn’t it? It is indeed. And it is one of many memes around Bajaj Finance and their repeated calls for loans, etc, that have been doing the rounds of social media for long.  

Many have voiced their irritation with the pesky unsolicited calls and, interestingly, even the top officials of the company are aware of the issue and are now actively working towards resolving it even as they highlight that such calls or the number of irritated recipients form a very minor proportion of their overall operations. 

“We issue three million loans a month. We get 1,500 complaints per quarter… we have to try and understand why are they getting bombarded while ensuring that the three million people a month do not lose out on the opportunity to be financially included,” said Bajaj Finance Chairman Sanjiv Bajaj. 

This assumes significance as Bajaj Finance is one of the largest non-banking financial companies (NBFC) in the country, with assets under management totalling nearly Rs 2 lakh crore in FY22; it clocked a profit of Rs 7,028 crore in FY22. 

The robustness of the NBFC, however, has not deterred people from airing their anger on social media and the company is taking steps to address this concern. 

“We process nearly 25–30 million payments a month… Unfortunately, a few of those go wrong. We have to make sure we have zero complaints,” said Bajaj while announcing the launch of the group’s mutual fund business on Tuesday. 

“We know we have to get to zero complaints. But I think we also need to understand that some of this unfortunately does happen in the world that we live in… You will see in three months’ time on our website and our app an option—you click it and we will never bother you again. You will have the right to be forgotten by us,” he added. 

Incidentally, he even highlighted the fact that while the company takes data protection and privacy very seriously, institutional fraud has become a significant issue and there have been instances where people were reaching out to potential customers by claiming to be employees of Bajaj Finance. 

“We recently busted a 400-member organised fraud call centre outside Mumbai. But we do not take that as an excuse,” said Bajaj. 

According to Bajaj, who is the Chairman and Managing Director of Bajaj Finserv, the holding company of the group, such “push calls” account for less than 15 per cent of the business and the aim is to bring it down to less than 10 per cent or even take it down to zero. 

“The aim would ideally be getting that 15 per cent down to 10 per cent or take it down to zero so that our calls would only be service calls. All promotional activities will happen through our digital channels. That is the aim we want to get to,” he said. 

As for the memes, he said on a lighter note: “I love all the different memes that we see on social media.”