PNB Housing Finance plans to lay off around 5-7% of its employees to streamline costs.

The PNB Housing Finance mortgage lender is intended to lay off around 5-7% of its employees to an apparent effort to streamline costs as the business is declining, joining an extensive number of firms which trimmed their workforce over the last six months.

On Wednesday, barely a month after Hardayal Prasad began taking as chief executive replacing interim head Neeraj Vyas, PNB Housing Finance’s decision was taken.

Two people familiar with the matter said that the organisation had asked 80–100 employees to leave.

The lender had 1,500 employees across India before the shedding started with Rs 4863 crore market cap and Rs 68,000 crore loans outstanding.

“We are reassigning resources to position PNB Housing in order to achieve steady growth. These initiatives require very tough choices, with a small range of workforce changes. Moreover, the quoted figures are misleading and exaggerated,” said the company replying to a query on this matter.

“We are looking forward as an organisation to enhance cost efficiency so that our business and our employees can maintain the competitiveness and growth. This requires a rigorous and careful process in our costs and expenditures decision-making,” it added.

Though its disbursement in the June quarter decreased by 91% to Rs 694 crore compared to Rs 7634 crore in the previous year as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the degeneration of industry itself began last year due to capital constraints. Disbursements had dropped by half to Rs 18,626 crore in the FY20.