Lloyds group vice-chairman Mukesh Gupta told The Financial Express on Wednesday that subsequent to the Company Law Board's (CLB) recent order allowing Lloyds Finance to reschedule the repayment of fixed deposits (FDs) for a maximum period of four years, the company's bankers too have given it a `de-facto' seven year moratorium. "Further talks are still going on with SBI, the lead banker for the consortium," he said.

Banking sources said that Lloyds Finance has been allowed an interest-free period for the first five years of this seven year moratorium and added that the interest for the remaining two years is yet to be worked out with its bankers.

Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has rejected the NBFC's application seeking approval formobilising further deposits and has also restrained Lloyds Finance from renewing existing FDs. However, Mukesh Gupta clarified that the company has already washed its hands off from the fund-based business. It has stopped giving further loans, sold off its car loans portfolio to Countrywide Finance and in future will concentrate on marketing of financial services including providing car loans on behalf of other banks and retailing UTI/IDBI bonds. "We will soon start marketing of credit cards for a leading bank. We are also looking for a buyer for our corporate loans portfolio," he said. In case Lloyds is unable to get the right price for its corporate loan portfolio, the company will use the Rs 750 crore inflows expected from this to pay off its depositors and bankers. The outstandings for Lloyds finance are in the region of Rs 450 crore, Gupta added.

"Lloyds Finance will also be pruning its branch network from the current strength of around 60 branches spread all over the country, to about 40 branchesrequired to market the financial products," Gupta said.

Industry sources said that while almost 80 NBFCs have already got similar reschedulement reprieve from the CLB, this is only the tip of the iceberg as bigger players like Alpic Finance and Apple Finance are most likely to enter the queue outside CLB following the "success" of Lloyds Finance.