L&T Fin will enter gold loan biz but no timeline yet

N Sivaraman, president and whole-time director of L&T Finance Holdings spoke to CNBC-TV18 about the latest happenings with the company and the way ahead. 

Below is the edited transcript of the interview. Also watch the accompanying video. Q: Last time you had mentioned that you are looking to enter gold loans. Can you update us?
A: As a concept, as a product, we are evaluating it, but we cannot rush into it for two reasons; one is the regulatory environment at the moment seems to be little fluid. I think we need to see the regulatory environment emerging to be better. The second aspect is that we need to put in place significant level of risk management because this is an asset where significant frauds can happen and also issues in terms of evaluation and storage is also important. At the moment, we are putting in place all those requirements to make sure that a robust system and process will be available to manage this business.
So both, the regulatory environment and the process risk management have to be in place; we are working on it. I do not want to give you a timeframe because it