Reliance Capital to hire 3,500 managers, 50,000 agents

Having witnessed a dip of over 4,500 staff from its headcount in last fiscal, Anil Ambani group's financial services arm Reliance Capital will hire over 3,500 managers for its various businesses this year.

Besides, the company also plans to hire 50,000 insurance agents in the current financial year ending March 2012, Reliance Capital CEO Sam Ghosh told PTI.

The large-scale hiring plans comes on the back of the company witnessing a drop of 4,550 people from its headcount in its insurance, mutual fund and other businesses during the fiscal ended March 31, 2011.

The company's total headcount stood at 18,069 as on March 31, 2011, down from 22,619 employees a year ago on March 31, 2010, as per its financial presentations for the two fiscals.

Reliance Capital now plans to increase its headcount to near 21,000 people in the current fiscal, Ghosh said.

Reliance Capital is the financial services arm of the Anil Ambani group, which also has presence in businesses like telecom, power, infrastructure, media and entertainment.

The group employee strength also dipped by around 10,000 employees between May, 2010 and March, 2011, but latest figures are not available for across-the-group headcount.

As per a Reliance Capital investor presentation in March 2011, ADAG had "120,000 young, trained and motivated people" across its various group companies, as against a figure of "130,000 young, trained and motivated people" mentioned in a previous presentation dated May, 2010.

The sharp decline in Reliance Capital's headcount during 2010-11 was mainly due to life insurance business, while asset management, broking and distribution and general insurance segments also saw their staff strength declining in the year.

Asked about the decline in staff strength, Ghosh said it was largely because of a cyclical movement of people in life insurance business and the company has already started a major hiring drive.

"The fluctuation in headcount last year was predominately on account of cyclical movement of sales managers seen in life insurance business. We have already started hiring sales managers for our life insurance business and will be crossing the 12,000 headcount mark by July," Ghosh said.

"In addition, we also plan to add 50,000 agents in our insurance business during this fiscal," he added.

The insurance agents are not included in the company's headcount. Across the various businesses, Reliance Capital will hire more than 3,500 managers and take the total headcount to near 21,000 people, Ghosh said.

"Reliance Capital plans to hire over 3500 managers and ramp up its head count to around 21,000, across businesses, in this fiscal," he noted.

"All our businesses - including commercial finance and broking - continue to add more people, especially in their front line sales teams, in line with business targets," Ghosh said.

Reliance Capital said 74 per cent of its employees are in customer facing roles and the average age of its workforce was 34 years. Besides, the company had more than 1,900 women employees as on March 31, 2011.

Among its various business, Reliance Capital's asset management business headcount declined by 66 persons during 2010-11 to 958 employees, while life insurance staff strength dipped by 3,986 persons to 13,183 persons.

Its general insurance staff strength stood at 1,711 persons as on March 31, 2011, down by 92 persons from the year-ago level.

Besides, the group's broking and distribution business had 1,117 staff, commercial finance had 906, other businesses had 136 employees and a total of 58 people were employed with the parent company Reliance Capital itself.

Reliance Capital has interests in asset management and mutual funds, life and general insurance, commercial finance, broking, investment banking, wealth management, distribution of financial products, exchanges, private equity, asset reconstruction and other activities in financial services.

Reliance Mutual Fund is India's largest mutual fund. Reliance Life Insurance is among the top 4 private sector life insurers and Reliance General Insurance is among the leading private sector general insurers.

Reliance Capital's total income fell by 10 per cent in 2010-11 to Rs 5,500 crore (Rs 55 billion), mainly due to decline in general insurance premium and lower capital gains.

Its net profit, before one-time provisioning, rose by 9 per cent to Rs 470 crore (Rs 4.7 billion), from Rs 430 crore (Rs 4.3 billion) in the previous year.