Bajaj Finance nearly doubled its AI agents and more than doubled loans generated through bots, but operating costs have barely shifted as the lender expands its branch network and workforce.
Bajaj Finance is widening its artificial intelligence push, but the first signs suggest that the technology is helping the lender scale business faster than it is cutting costs.
According to an investor presentation released on Monday, the non-banking financial company was running 130 AI agents as of 30 September 2026, almost double the 62 it had at the end of the June quarter. The company said loans generated through AI voice and text bots totalled Rs 2,744 crore in the September quarter, a jump of 112% from Rs 1,295 crore a year earlier.
Even so, the effect on overheads has been limited. Operating expenses as a share of net total income eased by just 10 basis points to 33% from 33.1% a year earlier, while total operating expenses rose 23% to Rs 5,275 crore. Bajaj Finance expects a better showing later in the financial year, saying it still sees room for the ratio to improve by 25 to 40 basis points in FY27.
The lender has packaged the effort under a broader strategy it calls “BFL 3.0 – A FINAI Company”. In practice, that means AI is being used across customer acquisition, service and back-office work. The company said AI bots now appear in 77% of its promotional text messages, up from 35% in the June quarter, while 75% of do-it-yourself customer servicing is handled through voice and text bots, compared with 65% a year earlier. It also said automated quality checks were carried out on 22.8 million documents during the quarter, and its dedicated AI team expanded to 328 people from 121.
The scale of the AI contribution is notable, but it is still modest beside the size of Bajaj Finance’s wider franchise. Consolidated assets under management stood at Rs 5.84 lakh crore at the end of September, rising by Rs 37,680 crore in the quarter alone. The company is also expanding its physical network, particularly in gold loans and microfinance, which adds to costs and partly offsets any savings from automation. It opened 321 gold loan branches in the quarter, taking the total to 2,022, and increased microfinance branches to 480 from 447.
That wider expansion has also lifted staffing. Full-time headcount rose by 2,584 in the quarter to 75,845, although the company said the net addition excluding gold loan and microfinance hiring was 1,058. Meanwhile, industry reporting has shown that more Indian NBFCs are embedding AI and generative AI across the lending chain, from customer acquisition and underwriting to servicing and collections, as lenders look for better growth, tighter risk control and stronger customer engagement.
For Bajaj Finance, the more meaningful gains from AI may yet come from risk assessment rather than operating leverage. The company said an AI model that broadens the data used to evaluate new-to-credit and new-to-Bajaj customers went live in the quarter, and is aimed at roughly 5 lakh additional accounts in sales finance. It also plans to launch an AI risk scorecard for personal loans in the December quarter and an AI fraud-detection model in the March quarter, suggesting the technology may prove more valuable in underwriting and losses than in the near-term cost ratio.
Disclaimer: This article is intended to inform and educate, not to recommend or endorse any financial product, investment or strategy. Please consider your own financial circumstances and seek professional advice where appropriate before making financial decisions.
