Nuvama Wealth Management Limited

Nuvama Wealth Management Limited

1,660.40
INR
-12.55
(-0.75%)
210.28BMarket Cap
Oct 26Next Earn

Q4 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptMay 12, 2026

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Nuvama Wealth Management Limited Q4 and FY '26 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes.

Should you need assistance during this conference, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded.

I now hand the conference over to Mr. Ashish Kehair, MD and CEO, for his opening remarks.

Thank you, and over to you, sir.

Ashish Kehair

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you once again for joining this call.

It's a pleasure to speak with you all again. As usual, I'm joined by Bharat, our Group CFO, SGA team, our Investor Relations advisors.

We'll quickly cover the company performance for the quarter and the financial year and share some key updates and the progress around our priorities, and then following both mine and Bharat's remarks, we can jump into FAQ. Just summarizing the results, I think it was really an interesting year for everyone.

It started with the whole tariff drama and ended with a war, and I think many things happened in between. For us, it was a complete test of resilience this year.

We navigated multiple moving parts, including some things specific for us and overall macro uncertainty. I think before we go into details, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the entire Nuvama team and our clients for helping us navigate this time and emerge with a growth year even in these times.

Looking at our specific businesses, wealth management continues to grow, overall wealth management as a cluster. I think both the segments are showing a very, very healthy momentum.

Asset management buildout is progressing steadily. I don't think that business one should rush in because one bad performance year can have years of negative impact, and I think we are building out steadily.

Asset services was an important monitorable for us this year, specifically after what happened at the end of Q1, and I'm pleased to state that business has recovered fully and performed ahead of our expectations. Capital markets remained broadly aligned and witnessed some moderation this year.

Overall revenues for the year was closer to 3,100 and operating profit after tax was about 1,050. More importantly, as I said, composition of profits changed.

Profits from wealth grew by about 23%, and despite challenges, profit from asset services was around 14% year-on-year. Bit on market outlook and some industry trends.

I think we've always maintained and we continue to maintain that organized wealth management represents a multi-year structural opportunity. We still believe that the industry is in early stages.

Some consolidation, of course, will happen because large number of players are coming in like what happened with, let's say, private banking or NBFC over the last three decades. I think over time, few scaled players with fully diversified multi-product platforms will scale as long-term leaders, and there'll be a long tail.

This is representative of what happens in wealth management globally also. A few themes which are emerging across the industry, I think private equity interest in the industry is all-time high.

There is early signs of consolidation within asset management, specifically in mutual funds. We are seeing some transactions that are happening in the market where the smaller AMCs, which have spent some time and is not fitting into the strategic priorities of the promoters, are moving into stronger hands.

There is a growing preference for full-stack platforms. There will be a few niche single-product or dual-product platforms which will remain, but I think their scale will remain a challenge.

Multi-product, which has wealth, asset management, banking, research, custody all put in together, has a far more stronger client value proposition, resilience, and I think compelling opportunity for investors. Industry models will evolve I think over the next 5-7 years as the sector matures.

Several global platforms which we've seen in the past have transitioned from a stage of infancy to this mature multi-product stage, and I think India will move much faster than that. Coming to our business highlights, starting with Nuvama Wealth, our focus area, managed products and investment solutions or MPIS, as we call it.

It continues to be core growth engine for Nuvama Wealth. Almost full revenue growth for this year has been contributed by this product sub-segment.

The revenue stream, as I have alluded in the past, is a combination of managed products, which is AIF, PMS, MF, which are all annuity-bearing, and other investment products, which is fixed income, MLDs, insurance, etc., which are non-annuity-bearing. Total MPIS revenue for the quarter now stands around 150 crores, which about 2-3 years back was the full revenue of this business on a quarterly basis.

This year, MPIS revenue has grown by about 38% on a full-year basis, assets have grown by 32%, net flows have grown by 38%, representing about 30% over the opening assets. I think it's a very, very robust and healthy growth we've been able to achieve.

Lending, if you recollect, over the past 2-3 quarters, we've been talking about this, that it will increase focus, and it's now visible in the loan book. The loan book has grown by about 27% for the full-year basis, and closing book stood at about 4,900, almost 1,000 crores higher than the average book.

NII continues to contribute about 20%-22% of total revenue. There is some upside still there in this.

Net interest income for the year did not grow in line with the loan book, and that is very, very specific because whichever quarter or whichever time your loan book suddenly increases, there is a ECL provisioning that comes in, which is basis RBI, and in the next quarter onwards, that gets normalized and the NII picks up. Second, in Q4, there was a specific phenomenon, there was extreme volatility in the market because of the West Asia crisis, which basically leads to a behavior in our ESOP book where people don't sell.

They exercise, but they don't sell because they wait for the prices to come back. What happens to us is when they sell, our processing fees recognition gets accelerated because otherwise, the processing fee is over the life of the loan, which theoretically is one year, but behaviorally, these loans don't last more than three months.

I think once the markets are now back, in Q1, we should see some acceleration of processing fee. There could be a quarter or lag between the loan growth and NII growth, but eventually, if you look at 12-month rolling, it'll catch up.

Coming to the RM franchise, I think mandate here was what we are calling seniorization of the team because the quality of clients also are gradually improving. Last 1-1.5 years, we've spent on that.

Significant part of the team has been now become senior as compared to what we were about two years back. On a net basis, we added about 80 relationship managers in this cohort.

When I talk about productivity later, you'll actually see the impact of this happening. A lot of work is happening on technology and AI front here.

Foundational work is done. We are now implemented solutions for relationship managers across their value chain, which is acquisition, portfolio advisory, rebalancing, tax-loss harvesting, the whole value chain or interaction value chain between a RM and a client.

We've seen the productivity improvement which is flowing through because of usage of these tools. Earlier, we were restricting the tools only to training, which is now fully functional, rolled out.

Now we've moved into advisory also. We've seen about a 25% per RM revenue jump in this segment, and I think a large portion also comes through the usage of AI, which, to my mind, will continue in future.

On the solution side, we've added something unique in this segment. We've launched a service called Virasat.

This is nothing but a full-fledged estate and legacy planning tool for the clients in this segment. Earlier, this was thought to be a product which is needed more in the ultra-high net worth segment, but I think even clients in the HNI segment are now not only they've come to money, but they've also have reasonable amount of complexity because most of them will have children studying overseas, planning to settle overseas, you need to now have a structure which helps them transition the assets in the most tax-efficient manner considering that now there is offshore exposure also.

I think Virasat is launched, and we are very, very excited about this product. Moving on to Nuvama Private, this segment also continues to witness a solid, healthy growth momentum, starting with again product ARR.

The revenue stream here consistently has grown by about 25%-30% over the past few years, and now steadily contributes about 60% of our revenues. ARR assets are about 54,000, and yields are nearly between 85 basis points to 1%, this quarter being 1%.

I've always maintained that quarter-to-quarter, 10-15 basis points can move, but on an average, we should end up somewhere around 90-95 basis points. Net flows continue to remain strong, about 22% of opening assets, in line with our full-year guidance.

Even year-on-year, if I remove the one chunky flow that came last year, which was related to an M&A deal, we've grown the absolute value 20% YoY. Alongside growth in distribution assets, we've also seen expansion in our in-house advisory solutions.

We now have a full-fledged non-discretionary, discretionary PMS. We have advisory, we have structuring, I think that will all give an impetus to ARR growth in the future.

Coming to lending, here also lending has been in focus, but even now, it only contributes 10% to 12% of the revenues. There is scope to go up to 20%-25% over the next few years.

On the RM side here, just to give you a brief snapshot, over the last four years, amidst this entire competition, noise, multiple players coming in, we've been able to add about 60% of our capacity. We moved from 90 to about 150 now.

We will continue to onboard talent selectively, and we have a stated compensation philosophy that is not only performance-oriented, it rewards on merit, progressively increases as people perform better, but it's extremely transparent and aligned with long-term value creation. I think I wanted to leave a word of caution here for people that we've witnessed over the last 12-15 months, large number of new players are making lofty promises to RMs of future valuations which seem extremely stratospheric to us and no visible monetization signs.

I just want everybody to be thorough in their diligence before making any such plunge, because over the last decade, we've seen only 2-3 platforms where people have actually realized value, rest have either remained on paper or never realized, and in the process, unfortunately, many careers have been damaged. In Nuvama Private also, I think we continue to invest a lot in our tech and AI.

We've launched Agentic AI, which basically works alongside the RMs in doing, again, portfolio analytics, performance tracking, product insights. Again, here we've seen a productivity jump of about 10% to 15% revenue per RM.

We've also launched industry-first multi-currency module on portfolio reporting. Basically, we've maintained in the past that clients are increasingly allocating to offshore, and if the Indian markets give one or two years of somewhat tepid performance, which has happened recently, that phenomenon will only accelerate.

With that happening, you will need technology to support a multi-country, multi-currency portfolio for clients to review, rebalance, and basically, over a period of time, have control over the portfolio. Moving to asset management, as I said in the beginning, that we continue to steadily build capabilities around asset classes here.

I'll start with commercial real estate. Commercial real estate has been extremely successful this year.

I think right now the full fund is closed at about 4,000 crores, but as of end of quarter four, we were about 3,800. We've finished acquisition of three marquee assets, about 3.8 million square feet.

About 40% to 50% of our funds are deployed. Once we start touching 70%, we will launch a new fund.

We are working on the thesis of the new fund, and I think second half of this year is where we should look to launch. Again, the target should be anywhere between 3, 3,500 crores, part of which, of course, will come in this year.

Pre-IPO private equity, which is our oldest strategy in some sense, we've started to exit our first fund, Crossover 3, and we've launched a new fund, Crossover 4, the fund raise should be alive for the next maybe 6 to 10 months, and we should target to raise 1,000-1,500 crores there. We've strengthened the leadership team here.

We've hired Aditya Arora as the CIO. He has more than two decades of experience in private market investing across firms.

I've been talking about private credit as a strategy. Happy to state that we now have the CIO in place, Amit Kansal.

He joins us from Aditya Birla. That was his last assignment.

Has 25 years of experience in credit across the risk spectrum, from performing to special sits to distress. We are right now building the team, and we expect to launch our first fund, I think by end of Q2, again, maybe target about 1,000-1,200 crores or 1,500 crores in the first fund.

Some part of it will come in this year. This credit, I think, is an important expansion of the platform because not only does it augment asset management and takes us towards more exhaustive bouquet, but it also helps a lot in giving syndication transactions for our wealth clients and wealth businesses.

Coming to public markets, public markets, I think the year was extremely volatile. It was in line with what industry saw, at least in the HNI, ultra-HNI segment.

Incremental allocation to equities did not come. We got gross flows, but we also saw redemptions, on a net basis, we are nearly flat.

Hopefully, now, once the market bottoms and if there is recovery, we should be able to see that, but the key element here is we are in the process of getting the MF license. Our final inspection has happened, and hopefully, if we get the license in another two months, maybe plus a couple of months from there, we should launch our SIF, in which, over a period of time, we will migrate our long-short strategy, which is now has a five-year track record with a quartile 1 performance.

In this business, we've also strengthened our distribution team. We've recently onboarded Nimesh Mehta as the Chief Business Officer.

He comes with 27 years of distribution experience across firms like Motilal and ASK Asset Management and will play a key role in building and scaling our distribution capability. Coming to asset services, I'm really happy to state that business is back on its growth trajectory following the loss of key client that happened in Q1, and we saw drop of interest rates by 50 basis points.

We've been able to overcome both of that. Q4 revenues exceeded Q1, and full-year revenues grew by about 12%.

It's important to note, many a times we've been asked this question that is this business completely aligned to what happens to the markets or the flows of the market? Now if you look at the current year, despite the headwinds, index not doing anything, volatility in the market, yield compression, loss of big client, yet there is a near 15% profit growth, which basically signifies that this business characteristic is different from your core capital markets business.

Volatility is far lesser, the drivers are very different, we should not end up equating the same in terms of what will drive this and those businesses needs to be kept separate. This is more market infrastructure-like business.

Our focus here remains around increasing our market share and product value enhancements. On the international side, we are aggressively working with what is called GCLC tie-up, global custodian, local custodian, and we are on the verge of signing one of them globally.

On the domestic segment, I've highlighted before that we are building out the RTA and trusteeship services. These offerings are expected to go live by middle of Q3, and this will help us further increase our market share in the domestic clients.

We are currently at 22% of our chosen segments. Lastly, coming to capital markets, I think secondary market activity moderated through most of FY '26.

Equity cash ADTT declining by about 6% and futures ADTT declining 14%. Options, although, remained strong at 8% YoY growth.

Q4 witnessed a rebound of activity, but that, I think, was mostly led because of the volatility of West Asia crisis. Coming to the primary market activity, I think the year was still okay.

Record IPO mobilization across more than 100 mainboard IPOs despite market condition, although in H2, I think the story changed a bit. Retail participation went down, the quality of IPOs changed.

There were certain large IPOs where the fee pool was smaller. Overall, I think we were able to maintain our market share or slightly inch our market share up from 18% to 19% in terms of value, and we were 15% in terms of deals.

I think the market saw a reduction overall in the QIP volumes, which had an impact on this business. Coming to fixed income within capital markets, we had a healthy growth, about 35% year-on-year.

We maintained number one ranking in public issues, and in private placements, we are between three or four given in one quarter, we could end up three, in the other quarter, we could end up as fourth position. Most of the others who are above us are large banks with balance sheet.

I think that sums up from my side. I'll now like to hand over the call to Bharat to take you through the financial numbers in detail, and then we can cover the questions which you have.

Thank you. Over to you, Bharat.

Bharat Kalsi

Thank you, Ashish. Good afternoon, everyone, and a warm welcome to all the participants on the call.

Ashish anyways has covered the broader business environment as well as our own strategic initiatives and the market context. I will now jump on directly to the main numbers for the firm.

I'm pleased to share our quarter four and FY '26 results where we have seen almost a steady growth across all our key businesses. Ashish did allude to the fact that our IB and I was subdued in this quarter, but otherwise, all key businesses, whether it was wealth, private, or asset services, saw a decent and a stable growth year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter as well.

If you look at from our headline number, we have actually crossed the operating profit margin number of 1,000 crore. In this year, this is a big achievement for us.

Similarly, if you look at that on our dividend side, we have again declared a dividend of Rs 14 for our H2 FY '26. That takes to roughly 50% of our profit being paid as dividend, which is consistent with our dividend distribution policy.

Having said that, if you look at on the overall client asset basis, our total firm-level client assets were at 4.5 lakh, which was helped by the flows across the businesses, including asset services, wealth, and private, but there was a mark-to-market impact on the headline number. That's where the impact on the client asset is reflected.

In terms of the revenue, the quarter four revenue was around 825 crore, which is a 7% YoY, but if we remove I and IB businesses for the quarter, our actual revenue ex of IB and I grew by 13% in quarter four. If you look at on a full-year basis excluding I and IB, our revenue actually grew by 17%, which is where wealth and private has actually shown a 20% growth.

Now wealth and private put together contributes 55% of the firm revenue, which was almost 49% last year. The share of wealth and private has actually gone up.

Even if I go further down, if you add wealth, asset management, and asset services, now they contribute roughly 80% of the revenue for the firm, which was 74%. Why I'm highlighting these numbers are because this gives you that predictability of the earnings in the coming quarters and years, because these business are more recurring in nature compared to maybe I and IB, which can have a cyclical impact on a year-on-year basis or on a quarter-on-quarter basis.

Even if you look at the total cost for the firm, for the quarter, the total cost, when I say total cost, it's employee plus OPEX, has actually gone up by 9%, and on a full-year basis, it has gone up by 10% only. The reason of calling out is that that reflects the variability in our cost that in a year when the revenue growth is slower, our cost can be controlled or can be reflective of the overall performance.

Maybe as a reference to the fact that if you look at our FY '25, our revenue went up by 41% and our cost was up by 24%, and in this year, as the revenue has slowed down, is our cost has been controlled to that extent. Multiple reasons for the revenue slowdown growth was discussed during Ashish opening remarks, but that's where the cost part comes in.

If you look at from a Q4 cost versus Q3, you will see a growth in the number, but that's typically a seasonality impact which happens in Q4. I would say you compare Q4 FY '26 with Q4 FY '25, you will see that the cost has only gone up by 8% to 10%.

OPEX is up by 7% and the employee cost is up by 10%-11%. That's where the number is.

It's a seasonality which plays in Q4 if compared with Q3. Within cost, if you look at that, our OPEX is around 27% of the cost.

That is quarter-on-quarter would see a growth of 27%, but if you compare it with previous year quarter four, the growth is only 7%. This is just about the seasonality of the cost.

Similar trend you will see it on the employee side also, employee cost side. To that extent, we are comfortable with what is happening on the cost side.

Just a word of upfront disclaimer that maybe in FY '27, we'll have some incremental cost coming in our asset management business. As Ashish also alluded to the fact that we are launching the new strategies and obviously for our mutual fund license as we are moving towards the SIF business, there'll be an incremental cost which will come, but that's more like an investment, not really a so-called cost in isolation to be seen.

In terms of the overall, happy to share that the wealth management segment, when I say wealth management segment, wealth and private put together, the cost-income ratio has actually come down by 80 basis points compared to previous year, and even if I look at asset services and I and IB, the cost to income ratios are actually improved by 100 basis points. Just because wealth and private composition has gone up in the overall firm contribution, that is why you will see that the cost to income at a firm level has moved from 55% to 56%, but this is just a composition issue, otherwise the operating leverage in both the business has been reflected in the cost-income ratio being lower than previous year.

Operating PAT, again, if you look at for the quarter four, it was 269 crore, which is a 5% YoY growth, but within the profit growth, wealth segment actually grew by 23% and asset services grew by 12%-13% in quarter four. Even on a full-year basis, is a similar trend where wealth and private has actually gone up by 23%-24% and asset services is up by 13%-14% in that range.

Our ROE has been healthy at 28% for FY '26. Ashish covered a lot of details in terms of the individual businesses, but if I have to take headline numbers, on the Nuvama Wealth, the clients' assets are at around 1.1 lakh, which is a 14% YoY growth despite the mark-to-market impact coming in the last quarter.

Our MPIS assets now stood at around 39,000 crore, and we have registered a net new money of around 8,900 crore during the year, which is a 30% growth on the opening MPIS AUM, which is where we've been steadily communicating that the wealth should have anything upward of 25% to 30% as an opening net new money on the opening MPIS AUM, we've been maintaining that. The revenue was at 960 crore, which is a growth of 18%, and the retention remains stable at 90 basis points or so.

Again, if you look at the data book, you will find that the cost to income ratio for wealth business has actually improved by 135 basis points compared to previous year. Now it is running at whatever 65.7%, but the operating leverage is started playing in.

This is where reflected in the cost to income, and the operating PBT went up by 22% for wealth. In terms of the private, again, the numbers across the key parameters, whether it is the overall client assets, whether it is the ARR asset, which is actually gone up by 22%, the net new money, which is again up by 22%, or the revenue has actually gone up by 24%.

ARR revenue, as of now, has now touched 60% of the total revenue for private, which is where we feel comfortable at 60%-65% of the revenue coming from ARR side, I think we are on the right trajectory. Overall retention again remain in our guided range of 85 to 90 basis points, nothing to call out there.

Anyways, we deliberated on the RM expansion, how we have actually added the people over the four years and in this year particularly. The PBT for this business also was up by 24%.

Asset management, we discussed and Ashish actually alluded to the leadership hiring which we have done in the businesses, both for our private business, for our private credit, as well as on the business side, I think that that piece is at least taking the right shape. Otherwise, if you look at our management fees income is actually up by 31% on a YoY basis, I think this is where we are heading.

In terms of asset services, we did around 209 crore in Q4, and we did around 193 crore in Q1. This business has actually done better than what we expected for quarter four despite that the interest rates has actually come down and our earnings is basically a fixed deposit earnings on the margin money given by the clients.

Despite of that, the business has actually came out well. On the I and IB side, the revenue, if you look at compared to quarter three, it is broadly there, 138 versus 135 crore, and we did discuss about how the market in the quarter four has actually played in, more specifically on the ECM side.

One more thing which I want to highlight, which in terms of the fixed income, which is part of the IB business, that has actually grown 34% on a YoY basis and now it contributes almost 50% of the IB top line. This business is more structural in nature, can see a compounding growth of 20%-25%.

It has seen it, and it can continue to see a growth of 20%-25% compounding in the years to come. ECM is obviously, you guys understand, this is more linked to the market activity.

That is where the volatility or a quarter-on-quarter seasonalities can play in, but otherwise, this business has been doing decent for us. Overall PBT for asset services and capital market was around 830 crore.

This is where we are, and I think if principally we look at our various businesses, we seems that businesses are on the right track, and our focus businesses are performing relatively much better than what we initially planned for, and I think that's where we are. I hand over to the moderator in terms of the Q&A now.

Operator

Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session.

Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two.

Participants are requested to please use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now wait for a moment while the question queue assembles.

Our first question comes from the line of Manas Agrawal from Bernstein. Please go ahead.

Manas Agrawal

Hi. Thanks for the opportunity.

I had a couple of questions. I'll start with the relatively easier ones.

ECM, there are a couple of large IPOs that are coming. How should we think about our market share on revenue for the year?

Are we present in those deals or not? Second, from a regulation perspective, 1st of April, mutual funds have cut commissions.

What is the impact for the business or the consol from that perspective? That is on IE.

On the asset services business, wanted to just understand, a, on yield trajectory because I understand yields were elevated and now rates have come down, you've seen some amount of contraction going ahead. How do we think about that?

The last question is on wealth. You talked about a 25% increase in revenue per RM.

Is that all AI productivity? Is that including MTM, flows, etc.?

How to think about number of clients per RM in a steady state? Those are the questions.

Ashish Kehair

Let's start with asset services first. I think broadly when we do the numbers on yield, unless and until we have a client which becomes extremely large and the ratio of collateral shifts, I think the yield should remain at this level.

I don't think the yield will compress because we've seen a decline in the overall interest rates happen and that flow-through has largely happened. Maybe in the next 12 to 15 months, Manas, we'll see a reverse of this happening if the inflation stickiness is there because of fuel prices or the war situation being there, and if the central bank is forced to increase the rates, then I think we will see further upward trend in yields that will play out as and when our deposits get repriced.

On ECM side, I think our overall pipeline right now, we have about 40 to 45 live mandates largely across ECM and some in advisory. The pipeline remains healthy.

I think Q4 was when things got pushed a bit, and which we should see the recovery happen in the coming quarters. Even in advisory, we have certain large deals which are there, hopefully we will have a good year in investment banking this year.

Fixed income anyways continues to move at a very, very rapid pace there. On the wealth side, 25% increase in productivity is a combination of actually two things.

One is the seasoning of the vintage of the RM. If you see last year, our less than one year cohort was around 40%-45%, this year it's fallen to about 33%.

Which means that the RMs of higher vintage have increased in terms of cohort, so that contributes some increase in productivity. Second, of course, the contribution comes from the various initiatives you take in improving the learnability and improving the efficiency of people, which is where AI plays a role.

Net new money itself doesn't lead to increase. It's an outcome, it's not the cause.

The causes are actually these. Net new money and productivity increase is basically the outcome of that.

Manas Agrawal

Understood. Any indication on the mutual fund commission cut impact?

Ashish Kehair

I don't think we will go through that. It's not a topic which got discussed very frankly internally, I'm not sure how important it is for us because anyways, in IE revenues, for us, mutual fund is less than 20%, and the pass-through that happened because whatever initially that was proposed and what finally came through and the net margins which we get, I think is similar to what came through.

There is hardly any impact on us. Understood.

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Dipanjan Ghosh from Citi.

Please go ahead.

Dipanjan Ghosh

Hi. Good afternoon, everyone.

A few questions. First, if I were to think of FY '27, now obviously, there's a lot of geopolitical uncertainty that still persists.

Now on that backdrop, if we were to think of the transactional revenues ex of broking, majorly in Nuvama Private and maybe to a certain extent in Nuvama Wealth also, just wanted to get some sense of the deal pipeline that you envisage or in terms of market activity, what is the sense that you're getting in terms of the transactional revenues, because FY '26 was a relatively good year for the company on that front. My second question is on the Nuvama Wealth business.

Now if I look at the 4Q yields, normally it tends to be a little bit affected on the managed products and investment solutions because of the insurance revenues. If I look at 4Q to 4Q, the yields have held up fairly well despite the backdrop that one was expecting maybe some moderation post the ITC changes.

Just wanted to get some sense of your insurance commissions, how have that really held up, or was there some upfronting of Cat 1, Cat 2 AIF-led commissions out there? The third question is on the overall wealth piece.

Basically, if you were to look at the new incoming customers that you're getting, maybe more from the perspective of Nuvama Private and to a certain extent, maybe the high quality customers in Nuvama Wealth, would this be more from smaller cities, low ticket size, generational wealth, or first generation customers, or this would be poaching from erstwhile bank service customers? If you can give some color on the customer quality or demographics out there.

I have two data keeping questions, which maybe I can ask at the end.

Ashish Kehair

Dipanjan, transactional revenue overall in FY '26 for Private, the jump was about 14%. It was significantly lower than actually the ARR revenue.

ARR ARR revenue was 32%. I think if you look at both the businesses and if you look at the decomposition of the transactional revenue for us, like you said, broking is a large component, and then there is fixed income, which is again a flow business, which actually improves in times when geopolitics goes through this zone.

Third So I think between these two, if we add, in Nuvama Wealth, at least this would constitute about 90%-95%, and 5% would be some transactions or deals, and that also, unlisted for us is reasonably small, and hopefully with NSE listing for everybody it becomes small, because we've considerably reduced the exposure to unlisted over the last 2-3 years. It's not a large sum for us.

Whatever deals happen, they will happen more in high-yield credit transactions where we are co-investing with some fund or in commercial real estate, if any. Those are really not impacted by the geopolitics.

For us, actually, except broking, which is more linked to market market volumes, rest everything is reasonably insulated and actually works better when the equity markets don't do well. Both for Private and Wealth, we don't see that as an impact playing through.

I think it could only benefit. For from a yield perspective, I think right now the insurance yield impacts have been negligible for us.

It it has not led to that impact. In fact, the overall volume of insurance growth was also not like, like historically we would grow by 50%-50%.

I think it stabilized more to 25%-30%, but the yield impact is not there. Yes, a bit of Category 2 may be higher this year because again a reason being that if equity markets don't do well, then more money flow will happen in yield-based products, which actually sit in Category 2.

There's some amount of first-year commission, which is about 30% of the life commission. About 10% extra is what you make, which can insulate the yield a bit.

New customers actually remain the same. I don't think there is any change in demographic.

Migration from banks is a continued phenomenon and that will continue to happen. In Nuvama Wealth, Tier 2 is beyond Tier 1, Tier 2 actually is 35%-40% of our business.

In Private, still I would say the top 8-10 cities constitute about 80%-85%, 15% would be below that, because the density or the this thing is still lower. There are people there, but if you compare it to, let's say, a Bombay, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, the density of wealth is far, far, far higher.

Maybe another 2-3 years' time, that 15%-20% could reach to a 30% level.

Dipanjan Ghosh

Got it. Just two data keeping questions.

One is for FY '26 and 4Q '26, if you can break up the IB/IE between IB and IE. The second question is, what would be your distributed mutual funds within the overall cohort of distributed MF, PMS, AIF?

Whether you put the overall wealth together or private and wealth segregated out there?

Ashish Kehair

About 8 to 9,000 crores.

Dipanjan Ghosh

Sorry, this would be your overall distributed MF, right?

Ashish Kehair

Distributed MF, yeah. Borderline 9 to 10,000, correct.

Dipanjan Ghosh

If I can get the data on IB/IE?

Ashish Kehair

IB and IE broadly right now the split would be 30/70. 30 IB, 70 IE.

Dipanjan Ghosh

Thank you and all the best.

Ashish Kehair

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question is from the line of Lalit Mohan Deo from Equirus Securities. Please go ahead.

Yeah.

Lalit Mohan Deo

Hi, good afternoon, sir. Congratulations on a good set of numbers.

Sir, I have two questions. Firstly, if we look at the cost to income ratio for both the wealth segments for FY '26, it's remained around in the range of around 66% to 67%.

How should we look at this number for the next two years incrementally given that we are seeing improvement in the RM productivity as well? Secondly, on the asset services business, if you just do a back-of-the-envelope calculation, it suggests that the cash collateral within the asset under clearing has increased to more than 40% over the last 2-3 quarters.

Just wanted to understand what would have driven those things and will that be one of the reasons why we are seeing some pickup in the yields also? Just one data keeping question, sir, within the MPIS revenue in the Nuvama Wealth segment for full-year FY '26, what would be the split between recurring and the transactional revenues?

Ashish Kehair

Cost to income, just quickly covering that, Nuvama Wealth, we've seen 130 100 actually 150 basis points compression this year. That always will remain a toggle between productivity improvement and how much we want to reinvest back in adding capacity.

Because if we get growth, we could have spent that entire 150 basis points in adding more RMs, which we chose not to. I'm saying productivity improvement-led growth is 150 basis points in one year.

In Private, on the other hand, whatever productivity improvement happened, we reinvested in adding capacity. This will keep moving, but broadly like we keep saying, in over a 3-4 year period, you can see a 100 basis point reduction every year.

Obviously, we can choose to change if you want to add capacity at a more aggressive pace, because there is growth to be had. When many such players are coming into the market and operating at a loss-making business, I think we don't want to let the field get captured by others.

We will continue to grow and we will continue to toggle between how much of the productivity gains which we will reinvest back into adding capacity, because that gives us future growth. I think the second question was on the yield of asset services.

Yes, the cash component would have gone up, that is the reason why the yield has gone up, and that is because when we lost that large client, their cash component used to be lower given the size of their collateral. That got replaced with large number of smaller clients, their ratios would be different.

As I keep saying, as the client collateral size goes up, your ratio could change and cash could come down, but broadly, you'll either be at 70/30 or 75/25 at a portfolio level. The main trend or the impact on yield going forward could be how the interest rates move if the inflation remains sticky.

If you think that there is a 50% upside in let's say RBI will hike rates over the next 12 months, then a flow-through of that will happen in deposit pricing and we will see the yields go up if that happens. In MPIS, about 70%, 60% to 70% would be maybe 60% annuity and 40% transactional.

Lalit Mohan Deo

Sure, sir. Thank you for the answers, sir.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Abhijit Khare from Kotak Securities.

Please go ahead.

Abhijit Khare

Hey, hi. Good afternoon, everyone.

Operator

Sorry to interrupt, Abhijit. Your line is not clear.

Ashish Kehair

Abhijit, your line is extremely disturbed, huh? Just one.

Abhijit Khare

Hello. Is this better?

Ashish Kehair

This is better.

Abhijit Khare

Okay. This was an industry question, taking the lead from your opening remarks.

For incumbents when they think about the ultra-HNI business, it's obviously a compensation problem, but at the same time, like you all say, new entrants do not have a large platform as such. From a client's point of view, how are they looking at all of these new entrants?

Are they starting to kind of give away part of the wallet share, and that's where the industry is kind of getting more fragmented?

Ashish Kehair

Part of it, I think, will happen. That fragmentation, if you look at wealth management, is a global phenomenon.

Even if you look at players like maybe a UBS and all, which are world leaders, they have a 2% market share in the global wealth management AUM. I think India will be more skewed in that sense.

There will be maybe 3-4 large players, but there will always be a long tail. What happens if you have a large platform or a multi-product platform that you will be able to retain or you'll be able to get a significant proportion of the client portfolio because they also don't want to go through the hassle of having multiple advisors unless there is some genuine value add.

Genuine value add in client's eyes could be an access to a transaction or access to a product which, let's say, you cannot provide, but somebody else is providing. Typically, the way industry structure will evolve, that large clients will have, let's say, one or two core wealth managers where bulk of their portfolio sits.

Most of the annuity income and large part of the transactional income will sit there. Then there'll be smaller players who will have access to some deals, transactions, where there will be a long tail.

Obviously, in these smaller platforms also, there'll be certain exceptional RMs who will move, they will be able to move some relationships, there is no question about it. I think it'll be a struggle, because every large clients wants a lending line, for example, Abhijit.

Now let's say if you already have a lending line with an institution where your products, which are not so easily marginable, AIFs, illiquid products, it's difficult for a smaller platform to extend. There are single borrower limits, there are group borrower limits.

Then to be able to set up a vehicle offshore to move money. There are significant number of investments in the platform that will be required to be done, capital investment that will be required to be done for some player to start becoming meaningful in this process.

10, 20, 30,000 crore AUM, few RMs, a few initial client successes, one odd unlisted deal, one odd credit transaction, all this will continue to happen and create a lot of noise. On a systematic basis to attract flows, attract people, the kind of platform and infrastructure that is needed to invest and maintain, I find it very difficult to see that all these new incumbents will be able to do it easily.

Abhijit Khare

Got it, sir. That's very helpful.

The second question was if you could clarify on the point that you made on the GCLC tie-up and how does it play out and what are the benefits?

Ashish Kehair

Basically, when FPIs are investing globally, there are certain categories of investors which are large long-only funds, who then work with large global custodians which are multi-country presence. Somebody like a State Street or somebody like a Citi will have multi-country custodian presence, they will be able to offer their relationships.

Somebody like us, who's a single-country, single-currency custodian, does not have appeal for such clients. How do we counter that?

We counter that by having a strategic tie-up with a global custodian which does not have presence in India. It adds for them a new service or a new client segment which they can go after, and for us, we get access to clients which we would have otherwise don't have.

This is something which exists globally, and we are aggressively pursuing. We have one or two tie-ups which are in the works.

Once we are able to close, that'll basically open up a new set of clients which we were not able to access earlier.

Abhijit Khare

Got it. Just one last data question.

In the ultra-HNI business, around 4,500 families that we have, if you could give some further color on what is the distribution in terms of, let's say, more than 5 crore or 10 crore relationships?

Ashish Kehair

I think more than 10 crore, which is if you see the vintage and intersection AUM, more than 10 crore would basically be I think the third of the clients, which contribute more than 70%-75% of the AUM. This phenomenon is consistent across the top 2-3 leading players in the market.

As per our study of data, families which have spent more than 3 to 4 years start graduating towards higher AUM per family, and then that becomes a larger proportion, and rest would be WIP. I think about a third to 40% would fall more than 10 crores.

Abhijit Khare

Got it, sir. This is very helpful.

Thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Mohit Mangal from Centrum.

Please go ahead.

Mohit Mangal

Good afternoon and thanks for the opportunity. My first question is towards the asset management business.

Now if I look at '26, we had about 1,800 crore of net inflows, obviously distorted by public markets. Now in '27, you have

Ashish Kehair

kind of SIF 1,000 crore of net inflows.

Mohit Mangal

1,800, right?

Ashish Kehair

No, 1,000 crores of net inflows.

Mohit Mangal

Okay. Understood.

Now if I look in terms of '27 where your SIF and private credit is expected to be launched. I just wanted to know basically how do you see '27, what are the reasonable estimates that we can expect from this segment?

Ashish Kehair

Let's go strategy by strategy. Private equity, we've launched our fourth fund.

We are currently sitting at about 250-275 crores. We target to do maybe anywhere between 1,000 to 1,500.

Let's take the conservative side if we end up at 1,000-1,200. That adds up about 1,000 crores there.

Private credit, again, as I said, the launch will be somewhere around H2, and the first fund could target maybe 1,500 crores. Part of it will come this year.

I can't certainly say how much, but maybe half of it comes this year. Commercial real estate, our next fund also gets launched this year.

That would be a 3 to 4,000 crores. Again, maybe 30%-40% starts coming in this year.

On the SIF and public market side, maybe once we launch and we start seeing the flows happen, next quarter we could discuss the numbers. By that time, maybe the volatility levels of the market also should settle down.

Mohit Mangal

Understood. This is really helpful.

My second question is towards the wealth division. If I look at the external wealth managers, I think we have added about 1,000 over the last 12 to 15 months.

Now we have about 8,000 external wealth managers. Our own RMs are pretty stable at about 1,100.

Do you see this kind of business model evolving more towards EWM rather than your own RMs, although I understand the economics kind of remain the same, but just wanted to understand the business model here.

Ashish Kehair

No, not really. We will grow both, and even own RMs.

What has happened in the own RMs right now is that though the number may look steady, but as I said in my initial remarks, that we are doing the process of seniorization. Your individual RM that is going out and the one that is coming in, we are getting more senior variety, higher fixed-pay variety.

The way industry looks at productivity is very simple. If I give somebody a salary of 100 rupees, what multiple of that comes in as a revenue?

Let's say if you were having an RM of 100 rupees and that person was generating 3X, 300 of revenue, now you have an RM of 500 200 rupees, and he's also generating 3X, which is 600 rupees of revenue. The contribution to the company increases substantially, because your other costs per RM do not increase at the same pace.

You understood? That phenomenon also adds to productivity and operating leverage.

Mohit Mangal

Understood. This is helpful.

Just lastly on attrition, have we had any kind of a regret attrition during the year and any loss of AUM because of that?

Ashish Kehair

You don't typically lose lots of AUM because the number of hooks are large. Regret attrition in Private may be range of 1% to 2%, and in Wealth would be maybe 3% to 4%.

Mohit Mangal

Okay. Understood.

Thanks and wish you all the best for the financial '27.

Ashish Kehair

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Saurabh Dhole with Fyers Assets.

Please go ahead.

Saurabh Dhole

Good afternoon. I just have two questions.

First is on your private assets front. What exactly is causing the yields to kind of be so strong?

I understand there is a mix component here, the transactional assets versus ARR is improving, but is there any other color that you can provide for the yields? That is question number one.

The second one is, when you look at your ARR composition or ARR share improving, to what extent do you think this is happening because some of the transactional assets are moving to ARR? Thank you, please.

Ashish Kehair

Actually, for us, this second element has still not started playing out. This is a huge opportunity which we discuss internally, and we are yet to crack it where we basically have this mechanism of moving transactional to ARR, which will happen in somewhere around next 12-15 months because now we have the non-discretionary PMS, the discretionary PMS, all the enabling vehicles are in place.

We need to orient the team and start going out and demonstrating the benefits to the clients so that migration will happen. Right now, that's not happening.

It's purely basis fresh flows that are coming into ARR. Actually, when we look at the yields, the product-wise yields, there is no change.

It's basically composition-led. As I said, between 80 basis points to 1%, it will range depending on the composition change on a quarter-to-quarter basis.

We've looked at it multiple times, there is nothing more to read into that.

Saurabh Dhole

Given the fact that ARR is growing much faster than transactional, does it mean that there is more headroom to yields from here?

Ashish Kehair

Actually, our yield which we publish here is only ARR yields.

Saurabh Dhole

Okay. Got it.

Ashish Kehair

It's not a composite yield.

Saurabh Dhole

Okay. Thank you.

Ashish Kehair

Yeah.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Sandhya Aggarwal from Unicorn Assets.

Please go ahead.

Sandhya Aggarwal

Hi, team. Good set.

First question is on the asset services business. Given the RBI bank guarantee norms would kick in, do we see any impact on the yields from the asset services business perspective?

Do we see any changes on the ROCE basis of Nuvama's net worth or capital employed? Second is on the capital market or you can say asset services combined business, we are seeing the upsurge in the FPI derivative turnover on BSE and the SFT contribution in terms of participation on the BSE particularly.

How do we see as a trend for our business going forward given the incremental client addition that we are also seeing in our book and also on the exchange side we are seeing a good momentum there? Lastly, just if you could highlight anything, any updates on the PAG side, that would be all.

Thank you.

Ashish Kehair

The bank guarantee thing, we've done the incremental borrowing and all. Basically for us, we did the maths.

That has an impact, net of deposit cost, of maybe some 10-15 crores a year, not much should get covered in. In terms of increase in volume, that of course will have a positive rub-off on the asset services business, because if the volumes increase, I'm assuming that the profit pool for players will increase and they will deploy more capital.

Deployment of more capital basically means more collateral and therefore more earnings that will come to us. On the PAG side, as we have maintained that they've spent about now five years with the asset.

They've seen reasonable returns and they are a private equity fund, they will exit at some point in time. Right now, there is no process that is on.

Whenever something happens, you will also come to know. Right now, I think it's just status quo.

Sandhya Aggarwal

Any impact of ROCE basis we are seeing from the

Ashish Kehair

Not really. With 15-20 crores of Yeah, negligible.

Sandhya Aggarwal

Great. Good set.

All the best for the future. Thank you.

Ashish Kehair

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we have no further questions at this time.

I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments. Over to

Ashish Kehair

you. Thank you all for coming again.

I think we'll see you again after the end of Q2. Hopefully by then, the geopolitical situation would have resolved and we'll have something to cheer about.

Thank you.

Sandhya Aggarwal

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. On behalf of Nuvama Wealth Management Limited, that concludes this conference.

Thank you all for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.

Ashish Kehair

Thank you.