IIFL Finance on Monday (September 4) said it has launched a golden ESOP scheme worth Rs 180 crore. This is said to be among the largest Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) schemes in the BFSI sector.

This newly unveiled scheme aims to target 4,000 frontline employees across 25 states and five union territories. The list of beneficiaries includes call centre executives, gold loan appraisers, branch managers and other zonal sales staff.
An ESOP is an employee benefit plan that gives workers ownership interest in the company in the form of shares of stock.

ESOPs will be given to employees with at least two years of experience at the company with the highest performance ratings. The ESOPs are valued as high as 100 percent cost-to-company of the frontline sales employees.

“IIFL’s culture is where ‘owners work and workers own’. This is a recognition of the owner mindset of the employees at the front level who stayed loyal and performed exceptionally contributing to the growth of the company,” said Nirmal Jain, founder and MD of IIFL Group.

IIFL Finance has scaled-up its business operations, doubling its branch network to 2,800+ in three years and achieved a profit of Rs 1,608 crores in FY23 and AUM of Rs 68,178 crores at the end of June 2023. In a press release, IIFL Finance said it aims for Rs one lac crore AUM and Rs 2,500 crore profit by 2025. 

Due to its rapid growth in the recent past, the company has seen its share price rise from lows of Rs 65 to around Rs 600 today. IIFL Finance is one of India’s largest retail-focused NBFCs with over 85 lac customers and 35,000 employees.