Gold loan portfolio grows 3.8x, outstandings surpasses personal loans in December 2025 — What we know

The share of outstanding borrowings from gold loans has surpassed personal loans as of December 2025, with an increasing focus towards repeating gold loan borrowers, according to a report by TransUnion CIBIL.

The research titled ‘Gold Loan Landscape Report April 2026’, showed that gold loan portfolio as of December 2025, had outstanding of ₹16.8 lakh crore from around 4.7 crore borrowers; compared to ₹15.4 lakh crore outstanding from around 6.8 crore personal loan borrowers in the same period.

“Increase in existing to asset borrowers compared to 2022 shows higher focus on borrowers with existing asset relationship; this has happened on the back of significant increase in repeat gold loan borrower funding,” it added.

Further, data showed that gold loan origination volumes have seen a growth of 2.3x whereas in value terms the growth has been 5.1x from March 2022 to December 2025.

How much share does gold loan have in overall portfolio?

According to the report, share of gold loan balances in the overall portfolio has increased 3.8 times from 5.9% in March 2022 to 11.1% in December 2025 which is second only to the housing loan space.

It further noted that for non-banking finance companies, this has jumped from 4.3% in March 2022 to 12.6% in December 2025 (8.9x growth), for PSUs from 8.8% to 17.4% (3.8x growth), and for private banks from 4.1% to 5.3% (2.4x growth).

The average portfolio balance (gold loan) per trade has also risen ₹1.93 lakh in December 2025 compared to ₹1.08 lakh in March 2022.

Gold loan portfolio in India expanding to mainstream

As per the report, gold loans are rapidly expanding as a mainstream secured credit product, with 3.8 times growth in portfolio since March 2022. “There is also an expansion in the profile of borrowers opting for gold loan with new growth regions emerging in recent originations,” it added.

It further noted that there is a shift to higher exposure and multiple loans, where borrowers are taking bigger ticket gold loans and more concurrent loans, increasing leverage and risk. The average outstanding per borrower has increased from ₹1.9 lakh to ₹3.1 lakh each; and the average ticket size has more than doubled from around ₹0.9 lakh to nearly ₹2 lakh, it stated.

However, the stress signals are predictable. Wallet concentration, recent delinquency, unsecured exposure, and borrower‑level exposure for loans less than ₹2.5 lakh are “strong forward-risk indicators on the new gold loans”, the report noted.

“Implication of stressed borrowers taking gold loans is clearly showing in the higher credit closure rate, indicating that for a section of stressed borrowers gold loan has become the product of last resort,” TransUnion CIBIL stated.

What are the policy implications?

TransUnion CIBIL report suggested the following policy-level checks to counter risk:

• Stricter borrower-level loan-to-value (LTV) checks
• Risk-based pricing
• Better cross‑lender exposure visibility
• Monitoring repeat gold loan dependency

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