Terms of use

1. About us and these terms

Forward Finance Private Limited (“Forward”, “the Company”, “we”, “us” or “our”) is a non-deposit-taking Investment and Credit Company (NBFC-ND-ICC) registered with the Reserve Bank of India (“RBI”) under Section 45-IA of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, vide Certificate of Registration No. 0012/2026 and incorporated under the Companies Act, 2013.

These Terms of Use (“Terms”) govern your access to and use of our website and digital platform at www.forward.in, including the Portfolio Pulse tool, our calculators, the loan application journey, your loan dashboard and the Partner Portal (together, the “Platform”).

We are a lender. We are not an intermediary and we do not act as your agent, adviser, broker, distributor or portfolio manager. We do not accept deposits from the public.

By accessing or using the Platform, you (“you” or “User”) agree to be bound by these Terms and by our Privacy Policy, which forms part of them. If you do not agree, you must not use the Platform. You agree that these Terms constitute a valid and binding contract concluded electronically and you will not dispute their validity on the ground that they were concluded by electronic means, as contemplated under Section 10A of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

These Terms govern your use of the Platform. They do not govern any loan we extend to you. If you take a loan, that loan is governed by the Key Fact Statement, sanction letter and loan agreement issued to you and in the event of any conflict between those documents and these Terms, those documents will prevail in respect of the loan.

2. Eligibility

To use the Platform and to apply for a loan, you must be at least 18 years of age, competent to contract under the Indian Contract Act, 1872 and resident in India. The Platform is intended for use within India only.

You agree to provide information that is true, accurate, current and complete and to keep it updated. If you provide information that is untrue, inaccurate or incomplete or if we have reasonable grounds to suspect that it is, we may decline your application and suspend or terminate your access to the Platform, without prejudice to our other rights.

3. Your account and access

You access your loan dashboard by verifying your registered mobile number through a one-time password. You are responsible for maintaining control of that mobile number and the device on which you receive the one-time password and for all activity carried out through your account. You must notify us immediately if you become aware of any unauthorised use.

If you access the Partner Portal, you must keep your credentials confidential and must not share them or permit any other person to use them.

Portfolio Pulse and our calculators may be used without an account and without logging in.

4. Portfolio Pulse and calculators

4.1 Portfolio Pulse

Portfolio Pulse is a free tool that gives you a health check on your mutual fund or equity portfolio, based on holdings you provide by uploading a Consolidated Account Statement, uploading a spreadsheet or entering holdings manually. It reports your portfolio value, a health score and measures of liquidity, diversification, volatility and returns, together with asset composition, sector breakdown, concentration alerts and an indicative view of what you might be eligible to borrow.

Portfolio Pulse is an informational tool only. Its outputs are indicative, are not investment, financial, legal or tax advice, are not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security and do not constitute an offer of credit, a quote or a sanction.

The analysis depends entirely on the accuracy and completeness of the holdings you provide and on market data and assumptions that may change. Portfolio values, scores and eligibility indications will vary over time and may differ from any amount we are ultimately willing to lend. We do not warrant the accuracy, completeness or timeliness of any output and you should not rely on it as the sole basis for any decision.

Where your Consolidated Account Statement is generated through MF Central, you do so on a website operated by a third party, subject to that party's own terms. We are not responsible for that website.

4.2 Calculators

Our calculators, including the tool that compares the cost of selling your investments against borrowing from us, operate on figures and assumptions that you set, such as portfolio value, the amount of cash you need, expected returns, interest rate, tenor and tax rate. The results are arithmetic illustrations of the assumptions you have chosen. They are not a quote, an offer, a projection, a guarantee of any outcome or financial or tax advice and actual outcomes will differ.

5. Our lending products

We offer Loan Against Mutual Funds, Loan Against Shares and Loan Against Insurance Policies. Each is a secured facility under which you pledge, create a lien over or assign an existing asset to us as security and retain ownership of that asset subject to our security interest.

Product features described on the Platform, including loan-to-value ratios, indicative interest rates, loan amounts and disbursal timelines, are indicative, apply to eligible applicants only and are subject to change. Any securities we accept as collateral must appear on our approved securities list, which we may revise at any time. Availability of any product is subject to our internal policies, credit assessment and eligibility criteria.

Nothing on the Platform constitutes an offer or a commitment to lend. An application does not create any obligation on us to sanction a loan and we may decline any application at our discretion, subject to applicable law.

6. Applying for a loan

The application journey may involve verifying your PAN and mobile number by one-time password, fetching your holdings from the relevant registrar, transfer agent or depository with your authorisation, completing KYC through Aadhaar-based verification or another RBI-permitted method, selecting the assets you wish to pledge and executing the loan documents and security documents electronically.

Before you execute a loan agreement, we will provide you with a Key Fact Statement setting out the key terms of the loan, including the all-inclusive Annual Percentage Rate, the recovery mechanism, details of the grievance redressal officer and the cooling-off period. Any fee or charge not disclosed in the Key Fact Statement will not be levied at any stage.

You will be given a cooling-off period, as stated in your Key Fact Statement, during which you may exit the loan by repaying the principal together with the proportionate Annual Percentage Rate, without any penalty.

All disbursements will be made directly into your bank account and all repayments must be made directly from your bank account to ours. No disbursement or repayment will be routed through any third party's account or pool account. We will not increase your credit limit without your explicit consent.

7. Collateral, margin and enforcement

Please read this section carefully. It describes circumstances in which we may sell the assets you have pledged.

The market value of the mutual fund units, shares or other assets you pledge will fluctuate. Your loan is subject to a loan-to-value ratio specified in your loan documents. If the value of your collateral falls or the outstanding amount rises, so that the loan-to-value ratio is breached, a margin shortfall arises.

If a margin shortfall arises, we may call on you to cure it, by pledging additional acceptable securities or by making a part-payment, within the period specified in the notice. If you do not cure the shortfall within that period or if you otherwise default under your loan documents, we may invoke the pledge, lien or assignment and sell or realise your collateral, in whole or in part, in accordance with your loan documents and applicable law.

You remain liable for any shortfall that remains after such realisation. Any surplus will be returned to you. We will give you notice before enforcement to the extent required by your loan documents and applicable law and enforcement will be carried out in accordance with our Fair Practices Code.

Subject to our security interest, you retain the economic benefits of your pledged assets including dividends, corporate action entitlements, ongoing returns and, in the case of a pledged insurance policy, the life cover, bonuses and maturity value as described in your loan documents. On full repayment and closure of your loan, we will release the pledge, lien or assignment within the timelines prescribed under applicable law.

8. Interest, fees and charges

Interest, fees and charges applicable to your loan will be set out in your Key Fact Statement, sanction letter and loan agreement. Rates displayed on the Platform are indicative starting rates, are subject to eligibility and credit assessment and do not represent the rate that will apply to you.

Any charge levied for default or non-compliance with the terms of your loan will be levied as a penal charge and not as penal interest, will be reasonable and proportionate, will not be capitalised and will be disclosed to you in your Key Fact Statement, in accordance with RBI directions.

Prepayment and foreclosure terms, including any product for which no prepayment charge applies, will be as stated in your loan documents. All amounts are exclusive of applicable taxes, which you will bear.

9. Credit information reporting

We are required to report information about your loan, including your repayment conduct and any default, to Credit Information Companies. This may affect your credit score and your ability to obtain credit in future. If you believe information we have reported is inaccurate, you may raise this with us using the details in Section 17 and we will investigate and, where appropriate, rectify it with the relevant Credit Information Company.

10. Partner Portal

The Partner Portal is available only to firms we have registered as partners and to their authorised personnel. Your firm's relationship with us, including any commission entitlement, is governed by the separate written agreement between us, which prevails over these Terms in the event of conflict.

If you use the Partner Portal, you must not hold yourself out as an employee or agent of Forward, make any representation about our products, rates, eligibility or approval on our behalf or promise any outcome to any client. You must obtain the consent of any individual whose information you submit to us and must not submit information about any person who has not consented.

Any Lending Service Provider engaged by us acts as our agent under a written agreement and we remain responsible to you for its conduct in accordance with RBI directions.

11. Permitted use

You agree to use the Platform only for lawful purposes and in accordance with these Terms. You must not host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store, update, share or distribute any information that:

• belongs to another person and to which you do not have any right;
• is defamatory, obscene, pornographic, paedophilic, invasive of another's privacy including bodily privacy, insulting or harassing on the basis of gender, libellous, racially or ethnically objectionable or otherwise inconsistent with or contrary to the laws in force;
• is harmful to a child;
• infringes any patent, trademark, copyright or other proprietary right;
• violates any law for the time being in force;
• deceives or misleads the addressee about the origin of the message or knowingly and intentionally communicates any information which is patently false or misleading in nature but may reasonably be perceived as a fact;
• impersonates another person;
• threatens the unity, integrity, defence, security or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with foreign States or public order or causes incitement to the commission of any cognisable offence or prevents investigation of any offence or is insulting to any other nation;
• contains a software virus or any other computer code, file or program designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer resource; or
• promotes or relates to money laundering, gambling, terrorism or any unlawful activity.

You must also not:

• submit any false, forged or fraudulent document or information or apply for a loan in the name of another person or using another person's identity, assets or credentials;
• pledge or offer as collateral any asset that you do not own or that is subject to any existing lien, pledge, encumbrance or dispute that you have not disclosed to us;
• access or attempt to access the Platform other than through the interface we provide;
• use any deep-link, robot, spider, scraper, script or other automated means to access, acquire, copy or monitor any part of the Platform or to send more requests than a human could reasonably produce;
• reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or attempt to derive the source code of any part of the Platform;
• frame or mirror any part of the Platform or reproduce, sell, rent, lease, distribute or otherwise exploit any part of it without our prior written consent; or
• use the Platform in a way that could damage, disable, overburden, impair or compromise our systems or security or interfere with any other user's use of it.

12. Intellectual property

The Platform and all content on it, including its name, logos, trademarks, text, graphics, images, scores, analytics, models and design, are owned by or licensed to us and are protected under applicable intellectual property laws. All rights are reserved. You may view and print pages of the Platform and download or save the analysis Portfolio Pulse generates for you, for your own personal, non-commercial use only. You may not otherwise publish, distribute, modify, reproduce or create derivative works from any content without our prior written consent.

13. Third-party services

The Platform interoperates with third parties, including registrars and transfer agents, depositories, insurers, KYC and electronic signature providers and banks and payment providers. It may also link to third-party websites. Where you interact with a third party directly, that party's own terms and privacy policy apply and we are not responsible for its content, services or practices. This does not affect our responsibility for any service provider acting on our behalf under Section 10 of this Policy.

14. Availability and disclaimers

The Platform, Portfolio Pulse and our calculators are provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. We do not warrant that the Platform will be uninterrupted, timely, error-free or secure and we will not be responsible for unavailability during planned maintenance or for any suspension arising from technical reasons or causes beyond our reasonable control. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we disclaim all implied warranties, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.

Nothing in this Section limits or excludes any obligation we owe you as a lender under your loan documents, under RBI directions including the Fair Practices Code and the RBI (Digital Lending) Directions or under any other applicable law.

15. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Forward and its directors, officers and employees from and against any claim, loss, liability, damage, cost or expense (including reasonable legal fees) to the extent arising directly from your breach of these Terms or of applicable law, from any information or document you submit to us that is false, forged, misleading or fraudulent, from your applying for a loan using another person's identity, assets or credentials, from your pledging any asset you do not own or that is subject to an undisclosed lien, encumbrance or dispute or from your infringement of any third party's rights. This indemnity does not apply to the extent the claim arises from our own breach, negligence, wilful misconduct or fraud, from the conduct of any Lending Service Provider or other person acting on our behalf, from our failure to comply with any RBI direction applicable to us or from your exercise of any right available to you under law, including raising a grievance with us or escalating a complaint to the RBI or the Data Protection Board of India. This Section survives termination of these Terms.

16. Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, we will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss or for any loss of profits, data, goodwill, business or opportunity, arising out of or in connection with your access to or use of or inability to use, the Platform.

We will not be liable for any loss arising from your reliance on an indicative output of Portfolio Pulse or a calculator, from the inaccuracy or incompleteness of information you provide, from your failure to keep your mobile number, device or credentials secure or from delays attributable solely to a third-party bank, payment system, registrar, depository or insurer, although we will make reasonable efforts to assist you in tracing and resolving any such issue.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for fraud, gross negligence or wilful misconduct, for death or personal injury, for our obligations as a lender under your loan documents, for the conduct of any Lending Service Provider or other service provider acting on our behalf or for any liability which cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law, including the Consumer Protection Act, 2019.

17. Grievance redressal

For any questions or grievances relating to the Website or these Terms, please contact:

You can also write to:

Forward Finance Private Limited
Technopolis Knowledge Park, Unit No. 14, Mahakali Caves Road, Hanuman Nagar, Andheri East, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400093

18. Communications

We will communicate with you at the mobile number and email address you have registered with us. Communications relating to your loan or your application, including Key Fact Statements, statements of account, margin and repayment notices and other service messages, are sent as part of our contractual and regulatory obligations and will continue regardless of any marketing opt-out you exercise.

19. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate your access to the Platform, in whole or in part, if you breach these Terms or applicable law, if we suspect fraudulent or unauthorised activity or as required by law or by any regulator.

Suspension or termination of your Platform access does not cancel, reduce or otherwise affect any loan you have taken. Your obligations under your loan documents, including repayment and our security over your collateral, continue in full force.

20. Governing law and jurisdiction

These Terms are governed by the laws of India, without regard to conflict of laws principles. Subject to the grievance redressal and regulatory escalation routes in Section 17 and to any dispute resolution mechanism in your loan documents, the courts at Mumbai, Maharashtra, India will have exclusive jurisdiction.

21. Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. The current version will always be available on the Platform, with the Effective Date showing when it was last revised. Where a change is material, we will notify you and your continued use of the Platform after the change takes effect will constitute acceptance of the revised Terms. Changes to these Terms do not vary the terms of any loan already sanctioned to you, which may be varied only in accordance with your loan documents.