Bankers come knocking the doors of toppers with education loans

When Aishwarya completed Class XII four years back, she had no one to guide her to pursue her dream of becoming a Chartered Accountant. Daughter of a street vendor and facing the agony of living on a hand- to- mouth existence, Aishwarya preferred to join as assistant/helper in a small firm, earn her bit and help her parents. She scored around 75 per cent.

But Meenakshi, daughter of a house-maid, managed to get an education loan from a nationalised bank, as her mother's employer not only insisted that the maid approach a bank for loan but facilitated a meeting with the manager.

Till last year, the needy ones invariably had to knock on the bankers' door to get the education loan. And quite a few (like the ones mentioned above) preferred to borrow money from friends and relatives to pay the fees, rather than approach a bank for help, contending that there were too many formalities to fulfil for getting a loan.

This year though, bankers plan to depart from the routine. Instead of waiting for the meritorious student to approach a bank for education loan, the Lead Bank (Canara Bank) here has initiated steps to make the process of extending financial assistance for education ‘to the needy and meritorious candidates', hassle-free.

A senior official of the bank told Business Line that after analysing the hitch in giving away the education loan to the needy, the bank decided to proactively and systematically address the issue this year.

“We identified Government and Corporation schools in this district with the help of the district administration, a month ahead of the results; later, when the results were announced, we got the list of the first ten toppers in each of these institutions from the Chief Educational Officer. The idea is to sound out to these students that banks would be forthcoming in extending the loan, should they need such assistance to pursue higher education,” the officer said.

Out of the 297 schools in this district, 163 are private. School toppers in the remaining 134 comprising 65 - government schools, 16 – corporation schools, 35 – aided, 12 – unaided and 6 self-financing institutions have been considered ‘eligible' for the education loan

“It was further decided that no educational loan should be returned on the ground that the student/parent is having account with some other bank's branches. To ensure this, we traced the (residential) addresses of such meritorious candidates, checked the Ward number and the bank (branch) functional in that area for bank-wise allocation.”

“Bankers are now waiting to give away the commitment letter to the candidate(s) at a formal function to be held soon. The students and parents have already been informed,” he said.

The official contended that the public was being unfair in saying that bankers are not forthcoming in giving away the educational loan. “We do not say ‘no' to any person approaching us for an educational loan, but the branch head has the discretion to identify meritorious students while giving away the loan,” he added.

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