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Fraud, Ethics & Governance
Gold Jewellery Funding : Episode 19 A ring rarely comes alone. It comes with a finger size, a stone, a promise, a memory — and often, an expectation that something so small must be valuable. In gold lending, rings are the most misunderstood collateral: compact…Read in full
Fraud, Ethics & Governance
Bangles: Behaviour, Duration & What Time Reveals ORNAMENT Sub Series : Gold Jewellery Funding : Episode 18 Sunita didn’t pledge her necklace again. She chose bangles. One bangle at first. Then another, a few months later. Each decision felt temporary Each pled…Read in full
Fraud, Ethics & Governance
From Temporary Liquidity to Silent Continuity ORNAMENT Sub Series : GOLD JEWELLERY FUNDING : Episode 17 Sunita didn’t pledge her necklace again. She chose bangles. One bangle at first. Then another. Each time it felt small. Each time she told herself she’d cat…Read in full
Credit & Underwriting
ORNAMENT Sub Series : Gold Jewellery Business : EPISODE 16 When Meera walked up to the gold-loan counter with her wedding necklace in hand, she wasn’t thinking about LTV or purity. She was thinking: ‘Can I get enough to cover one month’s bills without losing t…Read in full
Fraud, Ethics & Governance
When Gold Became Working Capital: The Rise and Closure of the Re-Pledged Route Gold Jewellery Business - Episode 15 Introduction For decades, pawn brokers occupied a quiet but critical space in India’s gold ecosystem — bridging household distress, informal cre…Read in full
Fraud, Ethics & Governance
What Works, What Doesn’t, and Why the Confusion Persists Gold Jewellery Business Series - Episode 13 India’s gold ecosystem sits at the intersection of culture, collateral, credit, and compliance . As gold loans surge and jeweller-led schemes multiply, so do q…Read in full
Fraud, Ethics & Governance
The Legal Lifecycle: Where Gold Loan Risk Actually Surfaces Gold Jewellery Series - Episode 11 PART A — WHEN GOLD LOANS ENTER THE LEGAL DOMAIN ⚖️ Trigger Points (Not Defaults) Gold loans enter courts and tribunals not because borrowers default , but because: C…Read in full
Tractor & Rural Finance
Gold Jewellery Business Lending – Episode 10 An Empirical Examination of Risk Through Bank and Borrower Behaviour Stories from the Balance Sheet: What gold loan portfolios reveal when you stop reading NPAs and start reading continuity. 1. Why Read Gold Lending…Read in full
Tractor & Rural Finance
An Empirical Examination of Risk Through Bank and Borrower Behaviour JEWELLERY BUSINESS SERIES - Episode 9 Across Indian banks, gold jewellery loans typically form just 2–10% of total advances , yet contribute 15–35% of incremental retail credit growth during…Read in full
Fraud, Ethics & Governance
Jewellery Business Series - Episode 8 Not how loans are sanctioned, but how risk quietly travels. Act 1: The Customer Walks In A jeweller walks into a bank branch. He is profitable. He has customers. He has gold moving every day. He also has advance money from…Read in full
Fraud, Ethics & Governance
Jewellery Business Series - Episode 7 Across multiple jewellery clusters, a recurring structure emerges — what I refer to as the Gold Timing Mismatch Pattern — where customer money arrives before gold is actually owned or hedged, creating temporary liquidity c…Read in full
Fraud, Ethics & Governance
JEWELLERY BUSINESS SERIES - EPISODE 6 How Can a Banker Tell This Just by Looking at the Balance Sheet ? You cannot see the fraud directly. But you can see the timing distortion very clearly — if you know where to look . Think in four lenses , not one. Lens 1:…Read in full
Fraud, Ethics & Governance
Jewellery Business Series - Episode 5 The Schemes Around Gold — and the Risks They Don’t Advertise Gold has always been marketed as safety. But the moment it is wrapped inside a “scheme”, the risk quietly shifts—from the jeweller to the customer, and from the…Read in full
Credit & Underwriting
Jewellery Business Models - Episode 4 If Episodes 1–3 dealt with gold, cash, and clear archetypes , Episode 4 deals with what most banks actually struggle with: Businesses that look like retailers, sound like manufacturers, handle inventory like owners, but be…Read in full
Tractor & Rural Finance
Jewellery Business Series – Episode 3: Understanding the Jewellery Ecosystem If Episode 1 followed gold from bar to ornament, and Episode 2 dismantled the myth of the “cash business,” then Episodes 3 and 4 do something even more fundamental: They answer who is…Read in full
Credit & Underwriting
Jewellery Business Series – Episode 2 Jewellery is often described as a cash business . Customers walk in, choose an ornament, and pay upfront. So why do jewellers — even reputed, high-turnover ones — constantly struggle for liquidity? The answer lies in a sim…Read in full
Fraud, Ethics & Governance
Jewellery Business Series — Episode 1 A story of fire, skill, memory… and money . If you walk into a jewellery workshop before sunrise, you will hear it before you see it. The hiss of the furnace. The metallic tap of a hammer. The whir of a rolling mill waking…Read in full
AI & Digital Lending
Policy Vs Practice Series In FY 2024–25, MSME lending powered ahead as the fastest‑growing credit segment in India.” MSME loans surged 14. 1% , outstripping retail (11. 7%) and services (11. 2%) Their share of total (non‑food) bank credit hit an all‑time high…Read in full
Fraud, Ethics & Governance
Policy Vs Practice Series THE BEGINNING In just 67 days of early 2020, the RBI slashed the repo rate by 115 basis points — the steepest short-term cut since the global financial crisis. Corporate loan yields at India’s top banks fell by nearly 1% in a single q…Read in full
AI & Digital Lending
Circle of Trust After our episode on misplaced trust in institutions, a reader asked — “But what happens when everyone thinks someone else has done the checking?” Welcome to the world of Collective Bias — where due diligence drowns in diffusion of responsibili…Read in full
Fraud, Ethics & Governance
– When Trust Wore a Saree and Taught Multiplication Ponzi In the dusty corridors of a government school in Cuddalore, everyone simply called her “Ma’am.” Not Mrs. Something. Not by her first name. Just Ma’am — the kind that stayed etched in school diaries and…Read in full
AI & Digital Lending
(Based on the true story of the Susi Emu Farms scam, 2006–2012) If you drove past the outskirts of Perundurai , in Tamil Nadu’s Erode district, sometime around 2010, you’d have seen an unusual sight — acres of open land lined with tall wire fencing, hundreds o…Read in full
Tractor & Rural Finance
(Based on true incidents from North Chennai) There’s something unnerving about silence after violation. No shattering glass. No barking dog. No scream. Just… absence. Sharda sat still on the edge of her bed, her hands shaking slightly as she stared at the open…Read in full
Tractor & Rural Finance
Originally Written on April 1, 2017 - Reproduced as is, and may represent some facts relevant to those times. Yet the concepts are still strong and valid. One of the hot topics that gets discussed when many fellow colleagues handling similar portfolios meet is…Read in full