Northern Arc

Northern Arc partners with more than 300 originators across India — microfinance institutions, NBFCs, housing-finance companies, small-finance banks, and vehicle-finance lenders — to source granular loan pools. It does not originate loans directly to retail borrowers, instead working with these on-the-ground lenders to identify pools suitable for institutional funding.

Northern Arc has executed transactions with over 125 investors, including domestic banks, insurance companies, pension funds, development finance institutions such as CDC Group and FMO, and impact investors like Calvert Impact Capital. Foreign portfolio investors access Indian credit through Northern Arc's bond issuances and securitized structures.

Northern Arc acts as a credit intermediary, not a balance-sheet lender. It structures and credit-enhances loan pools — via rated bond issuances, securitizations, and co-lending facilities — to make them investable for institutions. Its own on-book exposure is limited and primarily for warehousing, with the bulk of risk passed through to market participants.

Asset classes financed through Northern Arc's structures include microfinance loans, micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) loans, vehicle loans, affordable-housing loans, agricultural supply-chain receivables, and consumer-finance receivables. The firm categorizes originator sectors into microfinance, MSME finance, affordable housing, vehicle finance, agri finance, and climate finance.

Yes. Northern Arc has raised dedicated funds including the Northern Arc Global Credit Opportunities Fund I, which pools offshore limited-partner capital for Indian credit exposure. These fund vehicles sit alongside its balance-sheet warehousing and bond-issuance conduit models as complementary capital-routing structures.

Northern Arc was founded in 2008 as IFMR Capital, incubated by the Chennai-based Institute for Financial Management and Research to build a market for financing microfinance institutions. The firm rebranded to Northern Arc in 2019 as its mandate expanded beyond MFIs into multi-asset credit intermediation. IFMR remains the institutional parent lineage but Northern Arc now operates as an independent, IPO-bound entity.

Northern Arc operates as a non-banking financial company registered with the Reserve Bank of India. Its rated bond issuances are listed on Indian exchanges and regulated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India, which is also the jurisdiction under which its IPO filing was made.