New Delhi, Nov. 8 -- Muthoot Microfin Ltd has raised its information technology (IT) spending by 40% this financial year to strengthen cybersecurity and digital infrastructure as artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted attacks increasingly target financial institutions. The lender is also seeing a shift in rural consumption, with households spending more on nutrition and better-quality products, including milk and dairy, managing director and chief executive Sadaf Sayeed told Mint.

"We have made a huge amount of investment in our security systems to ensure that there is no data leakage and there is no kind of intrusion into our application system," Sayeed said. The company's application system is developed in-house and hosted on a private ...