Gross Loan Portfolio (GLP)

The headline size metric

Gross Loan Portfolio (GLP) is the total outstanding principal of all the loans a lender has on its books — money lent out and not yet repaid. For a microfinance institution (MFI) or an NBFC, it is *the* standard measure of lending scale, the single number that answers "how big is this lender?" In India's microfinance sector, GLP is tracked closely through the industry body MFIN's Micrometer report, which aggregates the data across lenders.

The scale of Indian microfinance

India's microfinance GLP grew rapidly to several lakh crore rupees, reaching roughly ₹4.3 lakh crore at one peak (up about 25% year-on-year) before contracting to around ₹3.8 lakh crore by March 2025 amid sector stress, serving roughly 14 crore active loans. The sector then went through a downturn through 2025, with the portfolio shrinking on the back of regulatory tightening and rising borrower stress — an important reminder that GLP can fall as well as rise.

Who lends and where

The composition reveals the sector's structure. NBFC-MFIs lead loan originations with the largest share, while banks' share of microfinance lending has been declining. The portfolio is also highly concentrated geographically — the top ten states hold over 80% of the GLP, with a handful of states like Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh accounting for a large chunk. This concentration is a structural risk: localised stress (floods, political loan-waiver promises, over-lending in a region) can hit a big slice of the portfolio at once.

The marquee names include CreditAccess Grameen and Bandhan, with the historically famous SKS Microfinance as a forerunner. Industry projections have suggested the sector's GLP could grow substantially over the coming years as financial inclusion deepens.

Why it matters to investors

For anyone analysing a microfinance lender or small-loan NBFC, GLP is the starting point for sizing the business and tracking its growth. But raw GLP growth must be read alongside asset quality — a portfolio expanding fast while stress builds (rising overdues, falling collections) is a warning, not a triumph, as the 2025 contraction showed. GLP tells you scale; pairing it with slippages, provisioning and geographic concentration tells you whether that scale is sound. It is the foundation metric on which every deeper microfinance analysis is built.