India’s structured credit market has grown to USD 85 billion without developing the specialist advisory infrastructure this scale demands. Rating agencies cannot provide independent transaction advisory without creating conflicts. Big 4 firms deliver expensive generalist engagement teams. Boutique firms focus on regulatory advisory without the technical depth to model cashflows or build analytics platforms. Arrowbanc Advisory exists to fill this gap.
That opening is a claim. The rest of this piece is the argument for it.
The market has scaled faster than its advisory ecosystem
Indian securitisation volumes have compounded at roughly 15% annually since 2020. Private credit — through Category II AIFs, listed NCDs, and bilateral instruments — has grown faster. Cross-border flows into Indian credit from offshore asset managers have meaningfully re-started, and the RBI’s new stressed-asset framework has opened an entirely new asset class to institutional participation.
The practitioners who would have handled this work in a mature market — independent specialist boutiques staffed with senior structured-finance professionals — do not exist in India at institutional scale. What exists instead is a set of adjacent options, each with structural limits.
Why the existing options do not close the gap
Rating agencies are conflicted by design. A rating agency advising an issuer on structure, then rating the instrument it helped design, and then re-rating the same instrument in surveillance, cannot plausibly claim independence at any one of those points. Indian rating agencies have largely withdrawn from transaction advisory for exactly this reason. What remains available through them is rating itself — not structuring, not valuation, not portfolio analytics.
Big 4 firms are scaled and capable but structurally generalist. An engagement team assembled for an Indian securitisation mandate is typically drawn from an audit or advisory bench, not from a dedicated structured-credit practice. Rates reflect firm economics, not the size of the client. For a mid-sized NBFC executing its first or second securitisation, or a private credit AIF managing a ₹300 crore book, Big 4 engagement economics do not match the work.
Investment banks sit on the sell side. This is a feature for syndication and distribution and a structural problem for independent valuation, fund-side diligence, or advisory work where the issuer and investor may want different structural outcomes. In India specifically, the largest structured credit issuance platforms are also significant arrangers — the independence question compounds.
Boutique regulatory firms — the closest existing comparable — are excellent at regulatory advisory, legal documentation, and compliance work. They are not built to model instrument-level cashflows, value illiquid credit positions at portfolio scale, or deliver ongoing analytics infrastructure. The skill sets are adjacent, not equivalent.
Global structured credit specialists (Kroll, Houlihan Lokey, Lincoln International) have minimal onshore India presence. When they do engage on Indian mandates, it is typically through cross-border transactions, where India-specific regulatory and pool-data knowledge is limited.
What independence actually means in structured credit
Institutional clients use "independent" loosely in financial services. In structured credit, independence has a precise technical meaning.
An independent adviser does not:
- Rate the instruments it advises on
- Underwrite or syndicate debt it has helped structure
- Take placement economics on transactions it recommends
- Advise both originator and investor on the same deal
- Receive referral economics from arrangers, trustees, or rating agencies
An independent adviser can:
- Model a transaction in full without commercial pressure on a particular outcome
- Challenge rating assumptions, discount rates, or pool eligibility where the data supports it
- Value a position without incentive to mark it toward or away from any counterparty
- Recommend a different structure, different tranche sizing, or no transaction at all
This matters specifically in three situations. First, when LPs or auditors are reviewing a fund’s NAV and need confidence that the valuer has no interest in the answer. Second, when an NBFC is preparing for its first securitisation and needs advice that is not conditioned on arranger selection. Third, when a foreign investor is evaluating exposure to Indian credit and needs a local partner whose output will survive internal investment committee scrutiny.
Specialisation is a structural, not a marketing, claim
Structured credit is not a segment you can cover credibly as one line in a broader advisory practice. The body of required knowledge — securitisation mechanics, waterfall construction, credit enhancement sizing, IFRS 9 and Ind AS 109 implementation, SEBI’s AIF valuation framework, the new RBI stressed-asset directions, cross-border tax and regulatory structures, the practical behaviour of Indian pool data, the rating agency methodologies in use — is large enough to require a dedicated bench.
Large firms can staff that bench. Generalist firms cannot.
Arrowbanc Advisory is built as a specialist bench. Everyone involved works on structured credit. No one is pulled from an adjacent engagement at quarter-end. This is not unusual in European or US financial services — it is the operating model of every well-regarded boutique from Lincoln International to Houlihan Lokey’s structured credit practice. India is simply overdue a comparable firm.
What we plan to do about it
Four service lines. One specialist practice. Independent portfolio valuation at AIF, bank, and insurance scale. Transaction advisory for originators and investors on both sides of the onshore-offshore border. The ArrowAnalytics platform, currently in development, to deliver the portfolio-scale analytics infrastructure institutional clients should be able to expect. And an active research, training, and publication practice — because specialist firms serve their markets by publishing into them, not just selling to them.
If this sounds like the firm you wished existed for a mandate you have been scoping, please get in touch. If you want to receive our research, the monthly India Structured Credit Monitor is the place to start.
The gap was large enough to justify building something. We have built it.
