Bank of America to buy up to 49.9% of Jio Credit, in latest foreign push into Indian finance

The deal is one of a series of major foreign investments in Indian lenders and fintechs over the past year, as global firms bet on the country’s fast-growing credit market.

Bank of America (BofA) is acquiring up to a 49.9% stake in India’s Jio Credit, the non-bank lending arm of Jio Financial Services, for as much as USD 1.92bn. The deal values Jio Credit at roughly USD 3.8bn. BofA will initially take a 26.5% stake through a preferential allotment of shares worth up to USD 695mn, with the remainder coming from warrants worth up to USD 1.22bn, each convertible into one share within 18 months.

The deal makes BofA a joint venture partner rather than an outright owner: the two companies will have equal board representation, Jio Credit’s existing management stays in place and the company remains a subsidiary of Jio Financial for accounting purposes. The transaction still needs regulatory approval.

Jio Credit was set up in 2025 and has already built assets under management of more than USD 3bn, offering home loans, loans against property and securities, corporate lending, working capital financing and solar financing. It’s one of the fastest-growing non-bank lenders in India, a segment Reuters reports is growing more than 14% annually across personal loans, gold loans and small-business credit.

For BofA, the deal buys speed rather than a slow local build-out. Jio Financial brings scale, distribution and regulatory standing in India that would take years to replicate from scratch. BofA’s CEO Brian Moynihan called India “one of the world’s most important growth markets” and pointed to Jio Credit’s rapid growth as the reason to move now rather than build a comparable lender organically.

For Jio Financial, the deal is part of a pattern. The company, which listed in 2023 after splitting from Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, India’s largest private-sector corporation, already runs an asset-and-wealth-management joint venture with BlackRock and an insurance joint venture with Germany’s insurance conglomerate Allianz. Handing global partners large minority stakes in each business line lets Jio Financial pair its own distribution and customer base with outside capital and expertise, rather than raising money independently or building each capability in-house.

The deal is also the latest in a run of large foreign investments into Indian financial services, which totaled USD 11.7bn in 2025 and a further USD 1.4bn through the first half of 2026, according to Grant Thornton. Recent comparable deals include Japanese lender MUFG’s USD 4.4bn purchase of 20% of Shriram Finance, a large retail and vehicle-loan NBFC and Dubai-based Emirates NBD’s USD 3bn purchase of 60% of RBL Bank, an Indian private-sector bank. Meta Platforms has taken a different route into the same market, agreeing to invest USD 900mn in Indian fintech CRED, betting on consumer fintech rather than balance-sheet lending.

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