Coronavirus casts a long shadow over NBFCs India's banks are freezing credit lines to shadow lenders as the coronavirus crisis shuts down commerce in Asia's third-largest economy, but leaving this sector in the lurch risks wider financial contagion. All major state-owned and private banks have stopped lending to non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) due to concerns about their financial health as businesses they lend to reel from the impact of the pandemic, four industry executives, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the situation, told Reuters. This has led to a working capital squeeze for many NBFCs who account for nearly a fifth of overall lending as they struggle to meet operating costs. Their debt collections have dried up amid a 40-day nationwide lockdown to rein in the respiratory illness that has claimed over 500 lives. "For now, we've taken salary cuts of up to 75% across the board so that we can stretch the capital for a couple more months, but if things continue like this we are considering winding up our operations, the founder of a small NBFC that lends to small and medium enterprises said.