SBI rules out dual loan rate
The State Bank of India today said it had no plans to take a cue from rival ICICI Bank and devise a dual rate home loan scheme.
“We have no plans at present to introduce a dual rate home loan,” SBI chairman Pratip Chaudhuri said on the sidelines of the Ficci-IBA conference here today even as he hinted that the country’s largest bank had no desire to get into a prickly situation again after the RBI persuaded banks to scrap their popular teaser home loans last year.
Under tighter provisioning norms introduced last November, banks have to set aside higher provisioning for teaser loans.
The SBI had grabbed attention and market share in the competitive home loan space after it pioneered the teaser home loan scheme in February 2008 which offered a low, fixed interest rate at 8 per cent in the initial years of the loan. Later, it morphed into a floating rate at the prevailing market rate.
The SBI chief said its present home loan product (not a teaser loan) had been widely accepted and the bank had not seen any drop in demand despite higher interest rates.
“The borrowing public knows that in a floating rate, interest rates will go up and down. During the tenure of 25 years (of home loans), they go up sometimes and down at other times,” he added.
Chaudhuri said the bank was focusing on the introduction of simple products that its customers would easily understand. “It is much simpler for the sales force to explain the features,” he said, adding that the bank had come up with a uniform rate for car loan irrespective of the tenor or the amount.
Last week, ICICI Bank launched two home loan products, which give borrowers the option of having a fixed rate in the first two years of a loan, mimicking a key feature of the teaser loan schemes that the RBI had frowned on.
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