The Hindu Business Line : HSBC has appetite for more home loan portfolios

HSBC has built a home loan portfolio of Rs 2,500-3,000 crore over the last 4-5 years when it entered the mortgage market and is open to buying out more portfolios to increase the same.

``We always look for opportunities to buy out portfolios. Some housing finance-focussed NBFCs are available in the market,'' said Mr S.B. Aalok Kulkarni, Head-Retail Loans, Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Ltd (HSBC), at a press conference here on Thursday.

The bank clocks monthly disbursements of over Rs 150 crore of home loans by operating in nine cities.

On the retail loans front, the bank considers loans against shares and personal loans as significant businesses in India in addition to home loans. However, Mr Kulkarni did not share details of the portfolio size of those businesses.

HSBC today launched `Smart Home' a savings-linked home loan product along the lines of Standard Chartered's `Home Saver' and Citibank's `Home Credit/Saver'.

This product necessitates that the customer open a current account with HSBC. The EMI varies from month to month depending on the balance maintained in the account.

For instance, if a customer maintains an average account balance of Rs 1,000 in a month and has a loan outstanding of Rs 5 lakh with the bank, he/she will have to pay interest only on Rs 4.99 lakh i.e, (loan outstanding - average balance in the account i.e., Rs 5,00,000 - Rs 1,000 = Rs 4,99,000).

So, although you earn no interest on the balance maintained since it is a current account, the bank claims that the customer can save up to 50 per cent on interest expenses of the loan. The loan comes at a floating interest rate of 7.5 per cent with a maximum tenor of 20 years.

The bank through this scheme enjoys the float or investible surplus that the customer keeps in the account and gets an opportunity to cross-sell its whole array of products, debit cards, insurance and mutual funds.

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