Huge jump in home loan queries following rate-cut by SBI

Hyderabad, Jan 7 (IANS) The home loan queries with the State Bank of India (SBI) jumped three times since it slashed lending rate by up to 0.90 percent last Sunday, a top bank official said on Saturday.

Since the bank reduced marginal cost of funds based lending rate (MCLR) by 0.9 per cent from 8.90 per cent to 8 per cent, it received large number of enquiries, especially for home loans.

Rajnish Kumar, managing director in charge of national banking, told reporters that there was over three-time jump in online queries alone. "Traffic on our portal has grown by almost three times since the rate cut announcement," he said.

He said SBI was making all efforts to focus on growing the loan book.

Kumar noted that credit growth was "very, very subdued" so far. "In fact, our loan book has not grown at all after the note ban announcement on November 8," he said.

The SBI official said the rate cut led to a lot of excitement in the housing loan market. He believes that if the home loan market revives, it will be good for the economy.

Kumar said after demonetisation, the SBI had seen over three-and-a-half times rise in debit cards use at merchant terminals and on e-commerce sites.

The wallets and other methods of payment through mobile have also seen a healthy increase in both in volume and value, he noted.

The bank has installed 45,000 PoS machines since demonetisation of high-value currency notes.

Kumar pointed out that last year, they had installed one lakh PoS and this year they have doubled the target.