By Bill Ebinger | ABF Global Search
India’s record asset-backed securities year, fueled by foreign bank demand, signals where cross-border structured credit talent is concentrating and what asset-backed securities recruiting tracks next.
India’s asset-backed securities market has surged to a record. Global banks ramped up purchases to gain exposure to one of the world’s fastest-growing major economies. The implications for asset-backed securities recruiting are concrete, not abstract.
Foreign banks’ share of total issuance grew to about 35% in the year ended March. That compares with 28% to 30% in each of the preceding two fiscal years, according to Krishnan Sitaraman, chief ratings officer at Crisil Ratings. On total asset-backed debt sales of 1.53 trillion rupees, roughly 16 billion dollars, that translates into about 5.6 billion dollars of purchases by overseas lenders. The shift is a demand story, and demand stories reshape where firms staff coverage.
Why Are Global Banks Buying Indian ABS?
Barclays, Citigroup, JPMorgan and Standard Chartered are among the foreign lenders stepping up investments. The appeal runs deeper than yield. Aditya Bagree, head of markets for India and the subcontinent at Citigroup, framed it as access to a fast-growing domestic credit market, not just a yield pickup.
Several factors drive the move. India’s retail credit market is expanding rapidly. That creates more loans to bundle and sell as securities. For banks, buying these loans helps meet local priority-sector lending rules, which mandate that a share of lending reach sectors including farming.
There is a capital angle too. These transactions consume less regulatory capital than originating some loans directly, Sitaraman said. Capital efficiency plus market access is a combination that pulls senior structured credit talent toward a region. The curated record shows this is a familiar pattern. Bank retrenchment elsewhere, driven by post-crisis capital rules, opened space for private and structured solutions to fill financing gaps.
What Sits Inside These Securitizations?
Asset-backed securities here are debt instruments backed by loan pools. The collateral spans mortgages, vehicles, unsecured personal credit and gold loans. In India, securitization takes two forms. The first is ABS, known locally as pass-through certificates. The second is direct assignments.
Non-banking entities typically securitize portfolios with remaining maturities of one to 2.5 years. Average coupons range between 7.3% and 11.5% for securities rated AAA, AA and A, per Crisil data. That is a compact, short-duration profile with rating-band granularity.
This collateral mix maps directly to the broader asset-backed universe. The curated framing treats ABF as spanning financial assets such as loan pools and mortgages alongside consumer credit. Stable consumer collateral performance underpins investor returns in these structures. The structural protections are familiar: collateral isolation through special-purpose vehicles and tranched credit enhancement.
How Big Is the Market, and Who Is Issuing?
The market got a boost when Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Group companies raised 210 billion rupees through asset-backed securities in September. That was one of the largest transactions of its kind in the country. A deal of that scale signals institutional confidence in the channel.
Context matters on size. India’s market remains far smaller than China’s total ABS issuance of 2.28 trillion yuan over the past year. Yet the demand surge is prompting local shadow lenders to issue more such securities to diversify funding sources.
The issuer roster is broadening. HDB Financial Services, a unit of HDFC Bank, raised nearly 3% of its total liabilities via pass-through certificates as of March-end. A year earlier it had none, according to Chief Financial Officer Jaykumar Shah. For Aye Finance, securitized borrowings ran 75 to 100 basis points cheaper than the local bond market. The transactions carried ratings three to four notches above the company’s own credit rating, Chief Financial Officer Gaurav Seth said. Rating uplift through structure is the core economic logic of securitization, and it travels across borders.
Why Does Cross-Border Demand Concentrate Talent?
Foreign bank participation creates a specific staffing requirement. Buying Indian pass-through certificates demands people who can underwrite local collateral, model short-dated cash flows and navigate priority-sector and capital rules. Gaurav Seth captured the buyer logic plainly. Global banks and investors gain access to Indian assets and credits without making a direct loan or buying a bond.
We think of this as a coverage-depth question rather than a headcount question. The curated record shows structured credit products can yield meaningfully more than equivalent-rated corporate bonds. That premium rewards underwriting and structuring skill, not balance-sheet size.
What this means for teams evaluating cross-border ABS exposure is straightforward. The scarce capability is judgment across collateral analytics, surveillance and structure. Those are the same skills that the curated framing identifies as central to alternative credit performance, where manager and team selection matters far more than in public markets.
What Does This Mean for Asset-Backed Securities Recruiting?
The structural feature here is foreign demand rising from roughly 28-to-30% to about 35% of issuance in a single year. That is a fast repricing of where global banks want exposure. Capital efficiency and access to a fast-growing domestic credit market are doing the work, per Crisil’s chief ratings officer and Citigroup’s India markets head.
The curated context frames this as the same dynamic seen elsewhere. When bank capital rules raise the cost of direct lending, structured channels absorb the activity, and the talent follows the structure. For institutional credit teams, the pattern worth tracking is whether foreign buyers sustain underwriting discipline as volumes scale across short-dated, multi-collateral pools.
For asset-backed securities recruiting, the implication is specific. Demand growth of this shape favors professionals fluent in pass-through certificates, direct assignments, rating-band economics and cross-border surveillance. Coverage breadth across collateral types becomes the differentiating skill set. We watch the gap between issuance growth and the depth of teams equipped to underwrite it.
Common Questions
What should allocators know about asset-backed securities recruiting?
The India record is a demand-side event. Foreign banks lifted their share of issuance to about 35% in the year ended March, from 28% to 30% previously, per Crisil Ratings. That kind of jump concentrates the need for people who can underwrite local collateral and model short-dated, multi-asset pools. Allocators should note that the scarce capability is judgment, not volume. The curated record stresses that in alternative credit, manager and team selection matters far more than in public markets. Average coupons of 7.3% to 11.5% across AAA, AA and A tranches reward structuring and surveillance skill. For asset-backed securities recruiting, that means coverage depth across pass-through certificates, direct assignments and rating-band economics carries a premium. The metric worth watching is whether team build-out keeps pace with issuance growth.
How does India’s ABS structure differ from U.S. securitization?
India uses two forms. The first is ABS, known locally as pass-through certificates. The second is direct assignments, which transfer loan pools more directly. Collateral spans mortgages, vehicles, unsecured personal credit and gold loans, with non-banking entities typically securitizing one-to-2.5-year maturities. That short-duration, multi-collateral profile differs from the longer-dated U.S. consumer ABS universe, where revolving consumer credit alone reached roughly 1,300 billion dollars as of October 2025. The economic logic, however, is shared. Aye Finance securitized at ratings three to four notches above its own corporate rating, lowering funding costs by 75 to 100 basis points. Rating uplift through structure is the same mechanism that drives U.S. and European securitization. The differences are collateral mix and tenor, not the underlying credit-enhancement principle.
What does cross-border demand mean for structured credit hiring?
Foreign participation rising to about 35% of issuance creates a clear pull on talent. Buying Indian pass-through certificates requires underwriting local collateral, modeling cash flows and navigating priority-sector and capital rules. Banks like Barclays, Citigroup, JPMorgan and Standard Chartered gain Indian credit exposure without making direct loans, as Aye Finance’s CFO described. The capability that scales this is structuring and surveillance judgment. The curated framing notes structured products can yield 200 to 400 basis points more than equivalent-rated corporate bonds, a premium tied to skill rather than size. For firms building cross-border coverage, the priority is people fluent across collateral analytics and deal structure. We watch whether hiring depth tracks the pace of issuance growth, because demand spikes expose thin benches faster than they expose thin capital.
Bill Ebinger leads ABF Global Search, a boutique executive search firm specializing in asset-based finance, CLOs, securitized products, private credit, direct lending, fund finance and real estate debt. The firm advises senior leaders across structured credit and alternative credit markets.
Source: Bloomberg — https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-22/global-banks-drive-india-asset-backed-securities-sales-to-record