Future Group plan to offer loan, insurance cover at Big Bazaar

Kishore Biyani’s Future Group has revolutionized organized retailing in the nation, is stepping up his move to convert the group into a retail financial company. Working on this line the group is planning to exploit the millions of customers by offering schemes that walk into his stores to buy day to day grocery and clothing.

So, next time there can be chances that you might get a loan offer to buy a refrigerator or an insurance policy for your family when you pay for Aashirvad aatta at Big Bazaar, or a Proline tee-shirt at Pantaloons.

By giving such offers it is believed sale of consumer loans and investment options of Future Capital Holdings in the Big Bazaar, Central and Pantaloon shops will revive the financial services business that had failed to take off after a big hit in the initial stage of public offering during the bang. The group has also planned to launch credit cards with the nation’s largest card issuer, ICICI Bank but it did not take off. When ICICI Bank spokesperson was contacted in this regard, he refused to comment.

Kishore Biyani, Group CEO of Future Group explained, “The business will go through a virtual integration with retail because of the synergies of a common consumer”.

To explore the business the group hired former Goldman Sachs Group Inc executive Sameer Sain as vice-chairman and CEO of Future Capital Holdings and economist Roopa Purushothaman, who in 2003 gave her report on the same financial services firm, and had forecasted the emergence of BRIC nations as the next global growth drivers, to carry on its financial services business. But due to economic crisis the market crashed and the plans did not materialize as forecasted. Now the group is re-working on the plans.

Following this a common group Retail Financial Services team, has been formed which include finance and retail staff from Future Group, Future Capital Holdings (FCH) and Centrum Capital, a broking and wealth management firm where Future group holds stake, with common targets.

The group will incorporate the credit and personal investment products offered by FCH such as consumer loans, stock investing, forex and wealth management products from Centrum Capital and insurance products from the group’s joint venture, Future Generali, all on a common platform. The newly incorporated platform will directly extend to millions of customers that Future Group’s retail formats annually attract.

“What we have decided to do is closely integrate retail operations and the consumer financial services by creating common teams with joint targets,’’ said Sain. ``This will lead to better cohesion and collaboration to take advantage of the vast number of future group customers.’’

The group has not yet taken any decision to discard plans of launching a credit card in association with a bank which makes the concept of cross-selling easier. For instance, financial majors such as State Bank of India and ICICI Bank are in selling of slew of financial products from plain vanilla deposits, to stock trading, to insurance to mutual fund investments to even currency and other exotic derivatives to corporate clients helping them to earn thousands of crores in fees.

Future group cannot possible become a bank due to regulatory hurdles but it can grow in other areas of finance.