Traditionally, it has been the men folk who bought houses. But now women, who are increasingly joining the workforce, seem to be gaining the confidence to do so.
LIC Housing Finance is seeing such a trend with its exclusive home loan scheme for women, ‘Bhagyalakshmi’. In the January-March quarter, almost 40 per cent of the loans sanctioned by the company were to women, said a top official.
According to V. K. Sharma, MD and CEO, of the Rs 7,842 crore home loan sanctioned in the quarter, women borrowers, numbering 13,700, accounted for Rs 3,154 crore.
“In the first half of the last financial year, we had conducted a study on women borrowers, who accounted for about 15 per cent of our total customer base of eight lakh.
“We found, to our surprise, that their credit quality is much better. So, we introduced an exclusive home loan scheme — Bhagyalakshmi — for them,” said Sharma in an interaction with Business Line . The average loan size under the scheme, which was launched on January 8, works out to about Rs 23 lakh.
Borrowers under the Bhagyalakshmi scheme get 0.25 per cent interest rebate for the entire tenure of the home loan. The rate of interest is fixed for the first two years from the date of the first disbursement and is floating thereafter.
Sharma pointed out that the marketing pitch ‘ Mera bhi chhota sa ghar ho sakta hai, jo na maika ho na sasural ’ (I too can have a small house, which is neither my parent’s nor my in-laws’) of the scheme clicked with prospective borrowers. Bangalore, he said, is one of the major centres from where there is good demand for home loans from women. There is also good demand from Mumbai and Pune.
“The borrower profile is changing…. As borrowers, women have better creditworthiness,” he added.
Preferred employees
The LIC HF chief said whenever his company is recruiting, the human resources department is reminded that everything being equal, women will be preferred as employees.
“As employees, women are more polished, more dedicated towards the institution, and are more sensitive to customers, besides being firm,” said Sharma