Abans Financial Services Ltd is a financial institution built on the idea that a trading desk, a lender and an asset manager are stronger inside one house than standing alone - it calls itself a convergence, not a silo. It began in 2005 as a proprietary commodities trader, grew into brokerage, added a lending arm, and later folded in asset management, listing on the Indian exchanges in 2022 before rebranding from a holding company to a focused financial services firm in early 2025. The recurring approach is to earn fee income from managing other people’s money, interest income from a secured loan book, and market-linked returns on its own capital - always in that order of priority, so surplus cash is never left idle. # Business segments Two engines of roughly equal weight - a fee-based investment services platform that contributes the majority of profit, and a treasury that puts the group’s own capital to work - with a smaller, disciplined lending book rounding out the third. ## 1. Fee-based investment services: the profit engine that runs on other people’s money **This is where the group earns the bulk of its profit without deploying its own balance sheet, by manufacturing investment products, managing them for a fee, and distributing them through partner networks across India and offshore.** - **Manufacturer, not just a distributor** - the company builds its own funds rather than only selling third-party products, with an in-house research team creating strategies that range from a global arbitrage fund to portfolio management services (PMS) and alternative investment funds (AIFs). That means it captures asset management fees on the entire chain. - **A flagship fund with near-zero drama** - the Global Arbitrage Fund, regulated in Mauritius, hunts price gaps across commodities, currencies and interest-rate derivatives worldwide, and has delivered an 8.2% USD annual return since 2016 with almost no drawdowns. Over 80% of its money comes from international investors, and its assets have crossed $100 million. - **Multi-jurisdiction structuring as a moat** - the group holds a rare combination of licences: it is one of the few Indian players with an IFPRU 750k licence in the UK and the only Indian player with a QFII licence to trade Chinese markets directly. This lets it build funds in India, GIFT City and Mauritius, giving clients legal and tax flexibility that a purely domestic manager cannot offer. - **Broking feeds the ecosystem** - through subsidiaries in the UK, Dubai and India, the company executes trades on exchanges from the LME in London to the Dalian Commodity Exchange in China, with a proprietary trading platform built by an in-house team of roughly 20 technologists. The broking desk serves commodity houses, institutional desks and wealth advisors, and its market intelligence flows back into the fund strategies. - **Sold through partners, not a direct sales army** - distribution runs through wealth platforms such as Bajaj Capital, Equirus and SMC Global, which helped raise over ₹1,000 Crores in assets. A UK-based payments subsidiary, Corporate Avenue Services, adds a transaction-banking layer that is evolving from simple remittance into a neo-banking infrastructure play with an EMI licence underway. ## 2. Lending and credit: a small, secured book with zero bad loans **The lending arm is an NBFC that has been in business for over a decade and carries no non-performing assets, earning a net interest margin roughly one-and-a-half times the industry average.** - **Secured and short-tenure by design** - the loan book is built on secured and unsecured financing to individuals and small and medium enterprises, with the largest exposure in gems and jewellery (about ₹97 Crore) and agro-industries (about ₹66 Crore) as of mid-2025. Keeping loans secured and tenures short is how the company maintains its zero-NPA record. - **Capital-heavy on purpose** - the NBFC runs a capital-to-risk-weighted-assets ratio of 33%, roughly double the regulatory norm, and a net worth of ₹317 Crore. That conservative cushion means it can absorb shocks without ever needing a fire sale of assets. - **New bets are small and high-yield** - the NBFC is testing unsecured loans of ₹5-6 lakh to stock-market traders who hold share portfolios above ₹20 lakh, structured to earn an internal rate of return of 18-21%. The experiment is ring-fenced: it starts tiny, targets a known customer profile, and relies on the parent’s trading-domain knowledge to assess creditworthiness. ## 3. Treasury and principal investments: the group’s own capital at work **Surplus capital that is not needed for the agency or lending businesses is deployed into government securities, commodity arbitrage and equity-linked opportunities, with a heritage in physical commodities trading that keeps inventory turns tight.** - **Third in line, never idle** - the treasury only absorbs capital after the fee-based and lending engines have taken what they need, but it ensures no rupee sits unproductive. It earns market-linked returns while standing ready to supply liquidity back to the other segments when required. - **Commodities DNA** - the group started as a proprietary commodities trader, and that legacy shows in the treasury’s ability to hold physical commodity positions and offer warehousing services to market participants. Inventory holding periods were cut to just five days in FY 2024-25, so capital is not tied up in slow-moving stock. - **Core revenue strips out the noise** - because physical commodity trading can be high-volume but low-margin, the company adjusts its reported revenue by netting off the cost of purchases and derivative positions, arriving at a core revenue figure that reflects the economic substance of its treasury activities. # Group structure and partners **The listed parent sits atop a web of domestic and international subsidiaries that hold the licences, execute the trades and manage the funds, with regulatory permissions spanning five jurisdictions.** - The listed entity, Abans Financial Services Ltd, directly holds the NBFC (93.97%), the asset manager (diluted to 91.59% after a fundraise), and a capital markets subsidiary, while a branch in GIFT City operates under the parent’s own balance sheet with a fund-manager licence from IFSCA. - International reach runs through step-down subsidiaries in the UK (two FCA-regulated entities - one for broking and one for payments), Dubai, Mauritius (the fund manager for the Global Arbitrage Fund), and a Hong Kong entity that is being wound down. - The group has actively pruned its structure: an agri-warehousing subsidiary entered voluntary winding-up in early 2025, a Shanghai trading unit was sold in 2023, and a Dubai trading entity was dissolved earlier, removing non-core operations from the perimeter. - Intra-group transactions - loans, purchases and sales of financial instruments - are used to optimise working capital across entities, all conducted on an arm’s-length basis, and the parent has recently extended a corporate guarantee of up to ₹75 Crore to support a broking subsidiary’s working-capital line.